A Living Epitaph

Several weeks ago I participated in an online writer’s workshop. One of the creative moments required us to focus on what we would like to have written on our tombstone other than our name and dates. We were given five minutes to come up with our final epitaph. I didn’t need the entire five minutes because I try to leave a living legacy everyday.

I wish more people would think about what they will leave behind at the end of their days. We all will leave a message behind whether its intentional or not. When our family, our children, our neighbors, or even our coworkers think of us there will be an impression. When our name comes up in conversation what will be the first thought that goes with our name? For some this may be a morbid concept, especially since no one likes to think about their own death. Yet, in the climate of this pandemic, its become almost impossible to avoid conversations about death.

This past Saturday, my husband and I had to split up to attend two separate funerals. One was for a young father and the other for a seasoned senior grandmother. Neither of them died from COVID. I attended the services for my friend of thirty years. I can remember the first time I met her. She was the type of person that brought love and sunshine to the room. My impressions of her from beginning to end were the same. She loved her family, her work, and her church. She lived the principles of her faith. The funeral services for this phenomenal woman was filled with testimonies to that effect. There was joy in the midst of our sorrow because of the way she lived. The deposits she left in our lives will never be forgotten. The young man also has an awesome epitaph. He was best known for being a loving father. You rarely saw him without seeing his son. It was so obvious that his son was the “apple of his eye” as the expression goes. I can only imagine that his young son will hear of his father’s love for the rest of his life.

If everyone thought about how they want to be remembered on a regular basis perhaps there would be less ugliness in our world. After all, no one really wants to be known as the person who cursed all the time, or the person who bad-mouthed women and children, or the person who was so mean that everyone hated them, or the person who was simply taking up space in the world without contributing anything. I know that sounds tough, but I’m from the generation whose ideal for education was to help everyone become a good citizen – a contributing citizen for the betterment of our society. Those contributions could be made on various levels: family, community, city, state, country, labor, volunteerism, military service, or one’s religious affiliation.

Perhaps thinking about our epitaph could take precedence over our political and social views. Beneath the bureaucracy there are people – people who need friends, people who need solutions, people who need hope, people who need people. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. All I really have is my life, a few meager talents, and daily choices to make.. I choose life. I choose to teach the young and serve the elders. I choose to put my energy into fostering hope and kindness. I choose to use my life as an investment into the lives of others. What are the choices you are making? Will your choices lead to a beautiful epitaph? I love this quote from Billy Sunday: “Live so that when the final summons comes you will leave something more behind you than an epitaph on a tombstone or an obituary in a newspaper.” The thing that’s most important is how you live your life on a day to day basis. We each have an opportunity to create a living epitaph.

At the end of the five minutes in the writer’s workshop, I wrote these words: Her Legacy Lives On!

In loving memory of Mrs. Deborah Ousler Hayes and Mr. Eric Nyantekyi