Making legacy gathering simple, fun

Thank you, Sue Barocas!  Your book - Elderwriters: Celebrate Your Life! - is the book I'll give to the friend who loves writing, enjoys working with older friends. & loved ones, wants to find meaning work that touches countless lives.  Sue Barocas shows the way to creating a terrific workshop series on legacy-building through storytelling.

It's the book I'll press into the hands of younger friends to help them build stronger connections with grand-parents, great-aunts & uncles, grand friends.  Sue shows the ways for preserving family history while forging cross-generation connections.

It's the book I'll give to the activities directors at the "senior" communities I love so they can develop wondrous workshops to help their residents capture & preserve their treasured memories & precious wisdom.

Sue's Personal Legacy Document process gets my blue ribbon for breaking down the barriers that keep most older people from leaving a truly priceless legacy - their own stories.

Sue Barocas takes the terror out of legacy writing, makes it fun & fulfilling.  Bravo!  

Now get to your favorite bookstore or website & order a copy(ies) - NOW!

Stuff & nonsense

An answered query this a.m. on Quora.com notes three things everyone should do before they die.  Two left me with wistful smiles, they're so spot on - at any age: open up to people & make peace with your past. But the very first -  "Get your stuff in order & don't leave the material burdens of your life for those who love you " - has me torn between chortles & alarm, writing this posting before I've had breakfast or journaled.

"Get rid of everything before you die."  Seriously?  Pretty brutal, I suspect written by a young person with limited, if any, experience of oldsters elders ancients.  Their "stuff" are anchors to their past, links back to moments & memories that help keep them grounded in their here & now.

Yes, get rid of your stuff - throughout your life.  And let your family know the stories behind the items that matter.

One of my most treasured possessions is a small gift tag that Dad wrote to Mom on their first Christmas, in the heart of the Depression - "Such a small thing to show all my love."  I see the young man, making $17 a week (and happy to have that), wishing he could lay the riches of the world at his O Best Beloved's feet, settling for his heart. Over almost 40 years together, he would give her great & grand gifts, but none so precious as that card, which Mom kept by her bedside to her last day. Over the 28 years she was without Dad, whenever she looked at it, held it in the palm of her hand, she was that newly-wed again, 24 & just starting out on their great adventure.

To someone going through Mom's things, that scrap of paper would be charming, but - without the story - meaningless.  Sadly, too few of today's young people get to hear family stories as a natural pat of their day-to-day life.

Here's  what I would have in that #1 spot - Share your stories.  Tell the youngers in your life about how your grandfather turned the rolling pin in your hands for your grandmother.  Point out family pictures, give faces & scenes life context relevancy.

Yes, winnow out the things that don't matter, the stuff, then let your loved ones know why what remains matter.

If you are an oldster elder ancient:  One last gift to loved ones that really can reduce their burden & stress when you're gone - - clearly identify who in your family & circle of friends get which of your treasures.  It can reduce squabbles, clarify WHY you want this piece to go to that person.

If you are a younger:  Help your older loved go through & winnow out their possessions, even if they are able to stay in the house you grew up in to their final days.  Not to get rid of stuff, but to honor the precious things that should be moved forward to new lives, the ones that need to be bid adieu,, the ones that are kept - and why.

If you are a youngster:  Be curious about the earlier years of the olders in your life.  The old & the young often form stronger connections & alliances than either can or do with those in the middle.  Give it a whirl!

Throughout your life, keep your things to a minimum, which will mean different things to different people.  Share your stories.  Attach historical/sentimental value to what you have & let others know, too.  But "Get rid of everything" ? Stuff & nonsense!

I object!

My mother was typical of her circle of friends in shrugging off the value of internet access.  She especially saw little advantage to "getting online."  She was a devoted correspondent with a large group of family & friends - barely a day went by when she wasn't dashing off a note, reading a fresh-from-the mail box letter from Kerry or Lorna in Audstralia, Ellen down in Texas, Peggy in Missouri, and all over the globe.

Mom loved going out to shop & was, to the last, mobile & eager to GO - online shopping had no lure for her.  As for computer-based bill paying, she distrusted its security & she actually liked writing out the checks - a young adult during the Depression, she never lost a sense of grateful joy making out checks for this or that bill, knowing there was money in the bank to cover it.

What lured Mom onto the World Wide Web was the immediacy of discussion.  She quickly grew to appreciate the easy sharing of ideas, opinions, insights.  Within a week of venturing out into cyber space, she was hooked!

Not that it ever would have happened if she'd had to navigate the computer on her own.  This was long before tablets made computing less daunting for many oldsters elders ancients - just a hulking big personal computer staring her down.  But I had a vested interest in getting Mom up & running with computing - she was increasingly isolated.  Her health took a beating when she was 85;  although she recovered, Mom was never again spry.  She didn't venture out of the house if the was the slightest possibility of ice.

Hardest for Mom was the loss of her compadres, either isolated in their homes or moved closer to adult child, or died.  She was possibly the most social creature I've ever know; her circle of long-time friends was growing ever smaller, but her love of social interaction was as strong as ever.

Mom slowly evolved into embracing the internet, but once she did, became an online evangelist with a vengeance!  She loved sitting close to me in the computer studio, cup of coffee in hand, and dictate or direct, as I transcribed on keyboard.  She never did succumb to online banking or bill paying, never could completely get her head around carrying on a real-time e-mail discussion with her Australian granddaughter, but she DID take special delight in going online & ordering a custom designed flower arrangement -  complete with small pail & measuring tape - from a Sydney florist when her #2 son opened a high-end hardware store in that beautiful city she loved so well.

While Mom started out objecting to the internet having any value to her, nothing illustrates how fully she'd changed that original judgement than the last week of her full & glorious life, spent in her own room right next to the computer studio, where she received a flow of guests & answered e-mail questions from the local college's psych students.

Although we'd been warned that she could sink into deep depression, that only happened once - on Thursday morning, smack dab in the middle of her last week.

Nothing helped - I sang her favorite songs & hymns, read beloved passages from the Bible, talked about Dad.  No improvement.  Then I suggested - "How about if I check on any questions?"  Got a glimmer of a response, so I high tailed it next door.

Hit the mother lode!  One of the students asked, "I believe that I have met the woman I will marry.  What can you share with me about love & loving?"  Mom swung back to her usual self, taking deep joy in fulfilling the young man's request for wisdom & tender insight.  All thanks to getting past her objections to see the pleasures opened up through being online.

Some years later, I was working with my IT support (I have a past history of bad relationships with laptops). We were talking about how few older people back when Mom was alive were active on computers, how rare she was, how much that was turning around.  I shared with him my favorite story of Mom adventures in cyber space - the tale of that woeful Thursday & how one e-mailed question turned everything around.  Imagine my surprise to see a tear stealing down the cheek of my IT guy!

"I was the young man who asked that question - and I cherish & use what she shared with me every day."