Melancholy Paradise: What will your legacy be?

Pastor Dave Roberts, from Grace Bible Church, gave us a point to ponder during the recent memorial service for my friend Algie Pulley.

For about three years, Algie was one of my Gift of Time Alzheimer’s buddies. There, at Algie’s going-away party, the pastor talked about legacies. He spoke of all the good Algie packed into 85 years of living; all the good he did professionally and, more importantly, personally.

Pastor Roberts then did what religious leaders tend to do. He challenged us, asking that we consider our own legacies.

So it was not surprising that a few days later, on one of our early-morning walks, Wife Ellen asked me: “Do you ever think about what your legacy will be?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I think about it all the time. I kind of always have.”

The “all the time” and “always have” replies might sound weird. Maybe even presumptuous. As if I’ve been a college football player who strikes a Heisman Trophy pose, in the end zone, every time he scores a touchdown.

But that’s not the way it is. Though you, more than I, might be the better judge of that.

I think it’s mostly because I have always been acutely aware of my own strengths and talents – as well as my shortcomings – so I know what I expect of myself. And, since I firmly believe my strengths and talents come from God, I also have very definite ideas about what I think God expects of me.

When at a funeral or memorial service, we look backward at the legacy of the well-lived life we are celebrating.

When we put the question in aspirational terms, when we ask, “What will my legacy be?” we are looking forward.

So, there is past tense and future tense. But what our legacy is, present tense – and what kind of legacy we are building – are questions very much for the day to day and the here and now.

In The Godfather – a movie long on violence but also chock full of wisdom – Vito Corleone admonishes the weak-willed and down on his luck singer: “A man can’t be a man if he doesn’t spend time with his family.”

That line resonates with me now, just as it did more than 50 years ago. Then, as a teenager, I heard the words as both a goal and a warning. Now, as an older man, I realize that, if I have not been a good husband, son and brother, then anything else I have achieved or accomplished will have been all glitter and no gold.

We shape our own legacies, but others judge them. Part of this is found in the impact – sometimes unintentional and other times even unknown – that we have upon others. Maya Angelou put it this way: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Obviously, what I say and do will be the cause of how I have made you feel. But let’s not overthink this. And life isn’t all about feelings, yet there are times maybe it could be and should be more than it actually is.

Because of how I’ve earned my pay, ever since Jimmy Carter was president, I have been with people at the best and worst times of their lives. And, in those worst of times, I try not to behave like I am – here today and gone tomorrow – just a tourist in their tragedies.

There is an art to achieving a simultaneous state of empathetic involvement and neutral detachment. And not just for newspaper reporters. Cops and coaches know it. Teachers and preachers know it, too.

It must have been 25 years ago, when I was at the Temple Daily Telegram, that this point was driven home in a most-memorable way.

The lady who ran the local Head Start program had been robbed, raped and murdered in her own home. In each story leading up to her teenage killer’s trial, I rehashed all the blood and gore details. I saw myself in full-Bogart mode, hard as nails and unflinching in the face of violent facts. I suppose all that was missing, from this self-image, was a portable typewriter, a fedora and a cloud of cigarette smoke from unfiltered Camels.

One day a woman telephoned my office. She asked if I really had to repeat all that, in such harsh and lurid detail, every single time. When I asked her why this sensitivity toward the murder victim was so important to her, she replied: “That was my mother.”

Yeah, I toned it down after that. Not out of fear or favoritism. Only because, on that one occasion, I needed reminding that real people have to live with the words I put on a page. That realization will be part of my legacy. But, again, it is ultimately for others to judge.

And again, life isn’t all about sitting around the campfire singing “Kumbaya.” But, as a general principle, I think the Rotarians have it right with their Four-Way Test: “Is it true? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?”

In today’s political and cultural climate, some might think that’s hopelessly naïve. Yet it seems the opposite of naïve – it seems obvious, with clear-eyed clarity – that those who gleefully pour gasoline on fires will eventually be consumed by those same fires. As will, unfortunately, the rest of us.

Yet we can, in building our legacies, learn from negative examples as well as positive ones. On my daily morning runs I pray that I never do anything that brings shame or dishonor to myself, my marriage, my family and friends, or to anyplace I am working.

I’ll leave you for now – but only for now – with one last thought.

My late friend Algie Pulley’s favorite song was “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” He sang it all the time. He sang it for any reason and for no reason at all.

During his memorial service, there at Grace Bible Church, I spoke for a few minutes on behalf of A Gift of Time. And then I said, let’s all sing that song.

On a sudden impulse I brought Algie’s widow, Gayle, and his son, Jeffrey, to the front of the room to sing with me. And so we did. Side by side and with arms around each other’s shoulders.

I would not mind – I would not mind at all – if that one moment was also part of my legacy.