Left Behind

Left Behind

             I have been thinking of this for a while now.  Perhaps it’s because I am fast approaching my 75^th birthday.  As you get older the people that you grew up with start to disappear.  My father use to say that he knew more dead people than live ones.  He’s been gone about ten years now and I still miss him every day.  My sister has gone as well along with my mother my mother in law and my father in law and the list goes on and unfortunately the longer you live the longer the list gets.  Then one day your name is on that list.

            Then again just maybe it is because when I look around at the world I wonder where we are headed.  What is happening here in the “Land of the free and home of the brave”?  Can I even use that saying anymore?  Be that as it may, just what are we leaving behind?

            A while ago I saw a sign posted by a driveway that read “Estate Sale”.  It made me think of all the things I have at my house that I have collected over the years.  It also made me think of the fellow I read about once that decided he could actually take his most prize possession with him on his trip to the great beyond.  He was buried in his Cadillac.  I wonder if you have to buy gas in heaven?

            It is a fact of life (and death) that when we leave this planet we leave behind a bunch of things.  Then the people we have also left behind have to figure out what to do with all of it.  When you think about it, just what is the most valuable thing you will leave behind?  Is it your Cadillac?  I think not, more on that later!

          Most of the things we leave behind are memories.  Think about that for a moment.  It’s not our memories that we leave behind, they usually go with us.  That is unless we make an effort to do exactly the opposite and keep them alive.  We can in some ways choose those memories we want to leave behind!

That thought makes me think of the stories my father told us about my grandfather.  I don’t remember much about him because we didn’t interact with him a lot.  But I remember the stories my father told us.  They were in effect memories passed down to me by my dad.  My grand father was, by all accounts, quite a character!

Here is a short one for you that I can leave behind for you to do what you want with it.

Grandpa the Sharpshooter

A fellow came to my grandpa’s farm looking to buy a rifle.  He didn’t want to spend too much money.  That’s probably why he came to my grandpa instead of a gun store.  Of course this was before all the gun laws that we have now showed up and you could actually buy a gun from anyone.

He was in luck because my grandpa had one for him.  It looked rather beat up but my grandpa said it worked well.  That statement was not quite accurate, and neither was the rifle.  The rifling was pretty much gone.  In fact bullet didn’t spin it tumbled and often went through the target sideways.  That fact my grandpa left out of the sales pitch.

The purchaser was reluctant to buy the rifle so my grandpa decided to show him how good the rifle was so he loaded a round in the chamber and told my uncle Calvin (a boy at the time) to get an apple out of the barn.  So off ran Calvin to get the apple.  As Calvin approached with said apple my grandpa told him to throw it up in the air.  Up in the air the apple went and grandpa took aim and took the shot. 

“Bring the apple here!” yelled grandpa.

Calvin dutifully brought the apple to my grandpa who handed it to the prospective buyer.  There in the center of the apple was a hole.  That was all she wrote and the deal was made.  The man was impressed with the rifle and my grandpa’s shooting ability.  He took the rifle and paid my grandpa and off he went.

I’m not sure if Calvin shared in the profit from the gun sale for doing his part by putting the spike through the apple before bringing it out of the barn but I am sure there was some sort of reward.

So this is how it works with some of those memories.  I am passing along one of my memories to you and my grandchildren as well.  If my grandchildren pass it along it may live forever and if you pass it along to a couple more people and so on and so on, well you can get the drift on those kind of memories.

There is one physical thing my grandfather left behind that will be there for a while.  In North Stonington Connecticut, not far from the casino, is Wrights Road.  I didn’t know it existed until that one day when I was looking for the driveway to where my grandfather’s farm had been I found it.  The driveway to Fred Wright’s farm was now a road bearing his and my last name, go figure that one out.

            Some of us get to leave behind some really great things.  I was listening to Johnny Cash the other day.  He left some terrific things behind.  I use to think he couldn’t sing.  That was before my ears were properly adjusted.  They might just need some further adjustment because I still don’t think Bruce Springsteen can sing worth a hoot.

Unfortunately we, the majority of us, do not get to leave things like that behind.  No, we are delegated to a different type of left behind.  Here is the thing though, what we leave behind, no matter how short lived it may be, is just as important as the songs of Johnny Cash or the statues or the monuments because the impact can and will be what counts.  Just think about this for just a moment, something you do today could impact someone in a way that could change their life!  In this we often get to choose whether what we do is for good or for bad.

Back when I was in school, the fifth grade to be exact, I had a teacher named Mr. Vacarro.   My apologies if I don’t have the spelling correct.  Putting that aside he was one of the best teachers I ever had.  It wasn’t what he taught me or perfect lesson plans that got me.  No, it was that he was a genuine nice guy!  That kind of stuff rubs off on a kid.

I actually tracked him down about forty years later just to tell him what a great guy/teacher he had been!  I think that just might have made his day or perhaps even his week.

I had another great teacher, John Joseph Kelley who left scores of memories behind for me and for a lot of people.  He won the Boston Marathon in 1957 and there is a statue of him Mystic Connecticut.  In school he was famous for his puns and for his picture in Mad magazine.  I still remember the note on his chalk board, Mister “Kelley has gone Mad”!

Mister Kelley

At my age I should be retired spending my days relaxing and just having fun sitting on my rocking chair.  Well, I’m not.  I work as a custodian at a K through 8 school.  It’s a long story how I ended up in this position so I will leave that memory for later. 

The kids are there for two hours of my shift.  Those are the best two hours of the work day.  Why?  Because for two hours I get to leave behind memories like Mr. Vacarro did for me and I have an advantage over the teachers.  Yep, I don’t have to be an authority over them, I can be their pal.  At times I may be the most disruptive student in the school!

I have been doing this for five years.  That means for some of those youngsters I have watched grow from third grade to eighth! Last year one of the eighth graders asked me to give him his diploma at the graduation ceremony.  That was really special!  Hopefully I am leaving behind a bunch of good memories for the kids that go there.

It should be kind of apparent that the “things” we leave behind really don’t count for much.  Most of them get thrown away or sold.  That is unless, of course, they have some value as to who you were for someone that cared about you.

So let me see if I have this straight, it’s who you are, not what you are that really counts.  I will have to explain my meaning in this.  Let me handle the what you are first.  To me “what you are” is what kind of a job you have.  In my life time I have been many “what you are's” but in all of that I have been, as far as I know, only one “who I am”.  At least I think that is correct.  Perhaps it is time for me to have a conversation with myself to confirm that!

Now that I got that over with I’ll get back to the real issue.  In the end it goes like this, every day we leave behind something!  I don’t know about you but for me it is important what I leave behind every day.  It is not something that we should worry about two days before our name gets put on the list I spoke about a few paragraphs ago.  In most cases we have no idea just when that will be.  So what do we do about it?

I most certainly do not want my name on that list with the side note that I was a jerk or a fool or well, you get the drift.  I’m not exactly what “get the drift” actually means but I thought it sounded good.

Well to wrap it all up maybe it is time to have that little conversation in the mirror and decide who we actually are and make a course correction where it is needed and everyday think about this, what have I left behind?

One thing I may have missed in my comments is this:

The memories that our family has of our time here on this planet are the most important memories that we can leave behind.  They are our first priority! Never forget that!!!

What are we leaving behind? 

Thanks for reading my rambling!

PS when you get on that list look for the guy speeding around in his Cadillac I just might be sitting next to him!!