A Gift of Stories

Too often we think of legacy as meaning only money and things, so  we fail to realize how the gift of stories can be the most treasured legacy of all.  

Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe wrote, “this packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved.  In the end, it’s the family stories that are worth the storage.”

Stories are how we make sense of our lives.  Stories connect one generation to another into the infinite future.  Everyone loves stories.

Now don’t you have boxes of family photos?  What woman alive doesn’t promise to organize those photos ‘some day,’  but it seems a task too daunting ever to begin.  How do you even get started?  

You start bit by bit by giving the gift of stories. 

 Instead of another tie or nightgown, you give a story.  For Christmas, tell a story about your grandparents that you and give it to your siblings and cousins.  Brother’s birthday coming up? Why not pick one great or funny photo of him and tell a story about him.    What did you do when you were little?  What games did you play with him?  What were dinners like?  What was he like in high school? 

 When you do it in digital form, every one can have a copy.     We all now know how to use a word processor, we’re even getting used to digital and scanned photos.  It’s just a question of putting  photos and text  together.   Look at any one in  Ronni Bennett’s timeline to see how a pro does it.

When your birthday comes up, encourage your children to give you a drawing or a photo and a story.  Works for Mother’s and Father’s Day too.

 Ask your mother to tell you the story about the people in the old photographs you love.  Especially for the older among us, photos can trigger memories and whole scenes you haven’t thought about in years.  Now’s the time to save your parents stories.  

 When they go, their untold stories go too.  Robert de Niro said,  “I always wanted to chronicle the family history with my mother.  I know she would’ve gotten into it.  It would have been okay with my father, too.  But I wasn’t forceful, and I didn’t make it happen.  That’s one regret I have.  I didn’t get as much of the family history as I could have for the kids.”

 One lucky recipient of such a gift of stories was Rachel Lucas who wrote,

 Recording us as tiny children and as adults, and then giving us the gift of those memories and insisting he hadn't done "much." The truth was, it was the best gift I've ever received, in my entire life.

 Ronni Bennett has written on how blogging can enrich your life.    I say blogging can also enrich your legacy.   Bit by bit telling your story and the stories of your family.

Blogs can be a wonderful way of creating, collecting and preserving family stories.  Call it legacy blogging. You can post photos and collaborate on a family history.   We all have enough stuff.  We don’t have enough stories.