By Rev. Bob Thompson
Psalm 78
The last week of August was a busy time around the Cochrane/Thompson household. Each morning of that week, Maggie, age 9, and Rozi, age 7, arrived for a day of activities, a field trip, and then the chance to record what had happened that day, in a diary that Grannie had supplied to each of them. It was the third annual ‘Grannie Camp’, and at the end of the week, the girls said it was the best one yet! Getting it all together requires a lot of planning and work on Grannie’s part, but she loves the time with her youngest grandchildren. And it is creating a lot of traditions that the two girls will remember and talk about, long after we are both gone.
Creating traditions is an important part of growing up. Mostly family traditions, but friends also create traditions that they sometimes gather to honour, long after childhood has passed. When my first wife Lorraine and I became engaged, she talked a lot about the family traditions that we were going to create around Christmas. The problem was that it was one of the busiest times of the year for a minister like me, and most of the traditions that got lodged in our family were church traditions, not family traditions. But in Winnipeg one year, a few weeks before Christmas, when I came into the kitchen after work, Lorraine said, “What do you always make to eat at Christmas?” I thought for a minute, and said, “Well I always make that hot drink, with apple juice, orange juice, cinnamon etc..” “No, not that...something to eat”. I thought for a few moments, but I couldn’t come up with anything. “Well,” she said, “You better remember what it is, because I overheard the girls talking this afternoon, saying that they sure hoped Daddy was going to make that thing he always makes for Christmas!” We didn’t need to make Christmas traditions...they had created their own!
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about all of this, and I wanted to share it with you, after I was asked last year, to officiate at the Celebration of Life, of an extended family member. When I met with his widow and children, they gave me a yellowed, brittle newspaper clipping. It was a poem that he had seen in a newspaper many, many years ago. He cut it out, put it in his wallet, and told the family he wanted it read at his funeral. We did it. The poem read:
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
As I took that poem home, and reflected on it, it dawned on me, that in it, he was saying how he wanted to be remembered as an ancestor. He didn’t tell us to look for his presence in a recitation of his career highlights or to seek him in the things he had accomplished. He tells us to feel him enjoying the moment with us as we feel the wind blowing through our hair, to know that he is savouring the feeling with us of the cleansing rain in the autumn. He says that in the quiet dawn, as night gives way to day, if we feel a kind of presence with us, that will be him.
Of course, we can’t tell people how to remember us. They will remember what they remember. But, did that poem act as an aspiration – reminding him to live in the way he wanted to be remembered? Was it wishful thinking, that wasn’t really connected with his daily life? I didn’t know him well enough to decide that. But it did seem to me to say how he wanted people to remember him.
I like the Aboriginal notion of ancestors. We tend to think that ancestors are people who lived long ago, but the aboriginal notion seems to be of a seamless progression that moves from one stage to the next. As the reading this morning says:
Children become adults
Adults become leaders
Leaders become Elders
And then, Elders become Ancestors
In the other poem by Lucille Lang Day, she says, “According to the dictionary, I’m not an ancestor yet, only a grandparent. But I am enroute to becoming an ancestor. When my grandchildren show their grandchildren my photo in an old album, I wonder what they’ll say.”
I wonder about those things too. Not all the time. Not even often. Living each day and living it to the full, should be our focus most of our time. But I think that, once in a while, it is worthwhile to pause and reflect on what kind of legacy, our actions, our thoughts and words will leave for those who follow us – not only on our grandchildren – but on everyone who we have known, and who will remember us. And another point to ponder is, that if we leave a good legacy, we will live longer, in the memories and actions of those who are the recipients of that legacy.
As I said, how we will be remembered is not dependent on how we want to be remembered, but on how we have lived our lives. But that legacy can live for a long time. I continue to marvel at how Stewart, Norrie’s first husband, comes up in conversations. How his children, when they or their families accomplish something, will say “Dad would have been proud of that”. I have heard more than one conversation between Norrie and her nephews or nieces, who have said how they still govern their actions by the examples that Stewart showed them, or the things he said to them. Stewart is an ancestor who is still very much alive.
I have talked about writing, and I have thought about writing my thoughts on our family life, for my children – not about the events of our family life, because they already know that, but about what motivated those events. I felt they needed to know Lorraine’s passion for reaching out to care for others – of the many causes she embraced, because I didn’t see a memory of that in their daily life. Then, a couple of months ago, I had a conversation with my oldest daughter, who is the administrative secretary at Trinity United in Vernon. She was telling me that the part of the job she found most rewarding, was operating the food bank. She stocked the non-perishable foodstuffs that congregational members brought in. She used the food bank money, to buy the groceries that were in short supply in the food bank. She fielded the phone calls from people who were seeking assistance, and she made up their hampers, and heard the stories of the recipients, as they picked up their hampers. She loved that part of her work, just as her mother would have.
Then the next day, I was having a conversation with my second daughter who works for Interior Health, and she told me she has enrolled in the course to become a Care Aid Worker. Lorraine’s great love had been her nursing career, and I said to Amanda that her mother would have been speechless and in shock, to hear that one of her daughters was becoming a nurse. Amanda said, “So am I”. I don’t need to tell my kids about the motivations of their mother. Lorraine, the Ancestor, is alive and well in their lives!
The thought often passes through my mind, of Royce carrying that yellowed brittle newspaper clipping in his wallet for decades. Obviously, it made an impression on me, because, more than a year after his Celebration of Life, I’m sharing it with you. I don’t know why he carried that poem with him. Maybe he just liked the words. But when I think about it, it causes me to wonder how I want to be remembered – what legacy I want to leave – what traditions I can still create. Maybe now that I’ve shared it with you, it will do the same for you. But it isn’t something to think about later, when I am old, or when I am older.
The last few years of Royce’s life were plagued with failing health and diminishing lifestyle. That isn’t how he wanted to be remembered. So, if we feel, as a result of thinking about these things, that there are things we want to change in our lives, this is the time to do it!
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