95-year-olds were asked what they’d do differently if they had life over

This week’s answer: They’d do more things that would outlive them. Legacy…they want legacy. They want to be remembered. That’s a beautiful aspiration but a tough ask. Here are my thoughts.

Here are two opposing thoughts—both of which I actually believe.

Legacy is overrated.

Legacy is a beautiful human impulse that we should pursue.

First of all, the cynical opinion—that legacy is largely a fantasy. I just don’t think we remember people very long or very much. Life marches on and memories fade and even if a library or a museum is named after you, it soon becomes a noun and not a proper noun…not your name.

I think of my mom. She was the ultimate person to leave a mark. She was magnanimous and loving and generous and giving and distinctive and artistic and tough and resilient. She’d survived the Russian invasion of Austria after WWII, married an Army officer, built a large family, and succeeded in real estate beyond her wildest dreams. She was clearly the matriarch of our extended family.

Then in her final twenty years she did yeoman’s work to pull her four kids and their kids—about 20 of us—spread out over Canada, Washington, and Colorado, back together again. She planned fabulous vacations and paid almost the entire bill. She flew out to visit us often. She planned her estate and went to great effort to include us and help us. She made us, her four kids, pledge to continue the tradition of getting together and staying close.

And even with all that, with all that love and effort and goodwill and all those vacations and time spent and visits made, her memory has become quite distant to me. It’s been fifteen years and if I’m honest, I don’t think of her enough. Last year I even forgot her on her birthday until I was texted by a sibling. Ugh! What a bad son I am.

But I don’t think I’m that unusual. I think I might be closer to the norm than not. Legacy and being remembered and creating something that will outlive you is tough and maybe unrealistic and probably worth being honest about.

Maybe this amendment to Jesus’s words might fit, “Therefore do not worry about your legacy, for the memory of you will take care of itself. This life has enough trouble of its own.”

Now, enough with cynicism...let me argue the other side. I think wanting things to outlive us is a good impulse, it’s ennobling, it focuses us on the eternal, not just here and now. We think about family and friends differently.

Back to my mom. Something actually did outlive her. But it wasn’t the vacations or the visits or the money. It was her spirit. It was her heart. It was her grit and perseverance and toughness mixed with graciousness and kindness and generosity that live on in my memory. I can feel that combination of virtues within me all these years later.

Her final years were spent with ALS, that neuron-robbing, pride-swallowing, ability-losing disease that is dreadful to witness. But she handled it with unbelievable grace, never wanting to put her family out. She contended, however, that when the feeding tube stage arrived, she would say ‘no.’ No tube for her…that was her line in the sand. She did not want that kind of existence.

But when the time came, my dad struggled. He begged her to reconsider. He pleaded with her to submit to the feeding tube so he could be with her longer.

And my mom conceded. She agreed even though it was not what she wanted. And it extended her life for another year, but I sensed that she regretted it many times. Not that she told me—she didn’t—but I could feel it.

Was that weakness in my mom? Was that giving in? Yeah, I guess you could make that case.

But to me, knowing her heart, it was much more about graciousness and kindness and consideration for my dad. She was willing to forgo her will and endure and sacrifice for my dad.

That was her spirit. That is what I remember about this woman. And that is what lives on in my heart and the kind of person I want to be. I want to be gracious like her. I want to be strong like her. I want to love like she did.

Olga Kitzwoergerer Guidroz accomplished what all those 95ers wished they had: her seventy-five-years outlived her.

Is hers a legacy for multitudes? No.

Is hers a memory that lies in the minds of hundreds of people? No.

Is hers a lasting good feeling and fond memory and spirit-enabling legacy that her four kids remember? Yes.

And the other sixteen in-laws and grandkids—yeah, they remember—best they can. But now the spirit of this remarkable woman is in your minds too.