Tonight we celebrated my wife’s grandmother as she turned 90 years old.
Pretty bad-ass.
She still does her own yard work, and that includes pushing the mower. She’s a savage.
The highlight of the party, aside from the BBQ, was a giant sack full of photo albums; the evidence from a life well-spent. I sat there and watched people share pictures, trade stories, and laugh; content to bask in their warmth and shut up for once.
It made me think of my father.
Several years before he passed, I gave him a nice leather-bound notebook with an inscription asking him to share his thoughts, experiences, hopes, dreams, disappointments, and everything in between. When the time came to go through his possessions, I found the notebook tucked away in his closet.
I stood there paralyzed with bated breath while I took the notebook with shaking hands and opened it.
Only to find blank pages.
My entire mindset of what legacy really was shifted in that very moment.
I started doing things differently after that.
And for more than 10 months, I’ve come here every day to talk about me and my shit. My thoughts, my stories, my words, and my perspective. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s what I originally came here to do.
But perhaps it’s time to start telling more stories; other stories.
Because the truth is, the story’s really just begun.
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