My father was laid to rest in a field of heroes as Taps filled the still afternoon and the flag he had defended was crisply folded and handed to my mother. The words “On behalf of a grateful nation” were whispered in her ear.
But as the honor guard fired its volleys, and the smoke from the rifles wafted away, I felt the swelling of pride alongside the daggers of loss. The man who had returned from the killing fields of the South Pacific had not simply created a family but had also touched the lives of so many throughout his years.
He touched mine. And I’m glad he did. What he gave me I call upon time and time again.
Death has always walked alongside me. It has since the day I chose not to be merely an observer of life but an active participant. It has since the day I pinned a badge on my uniform. It did the moment my father collapsed into my arms and breathed a final goodbye as my mother lay peacefully sleeping in the next room, in the bed they had shared for 50 years.
Time is always the ultimate victor in any race. I was reminded of that when my mother, who had come to live with me several years before, woke me one night with screams of agony. I rushed to her side and helplessly called for an ambulance as I held her hand, which clenched mine in a desperate plea for relief.
The next week was a blur of starched sheets, antiseptic odors, and indifferent doctors, which culminated with my mother’s decision to enter home hospice. Our time was short as I bore witness to the ebbing of my mother’s life.
I still wish I had the strength and the skill to provide more comfort. Nothing can prepare someone for what is to come. A sense of overwhelming loneliness enveloped me as I strode through Arlington National Cemetery.
I had taken my mother’s ashes so they could accompany my father, who not only shared her heart for half a century, but had also shared the uniform of the United States Army decades before.
This time, it was I who received the flag of our country and I whose tears were absorbed into the earth hallowed by generations of grief. It was also I who watched as the ashes of my parents were reunited for eternity and who felt the pride in their lives.
The network that Celebrating Legacy will be.
These two experiences, and another that put me within reach of death’s outstretched hand a few short weeks later, led me to begin thinking about my family and my own mortality. While no one can escape it, we can change the way we look at it.
Life is an amazing adventure. We have a brief moment in time to create a destiny, live a life, perpetuate the existence of the species and touch the lives of those around us.
Some of us come to know this, often times too late to do anything about it. And it was in my realization of this that we don’t have to live life within the confines of our own.
They are, by definition, a collection of those who have lived before us and left a legacy of knowledge, sense of purpose, and love. They deserve more than our honor and remembrance, but recognition that our experiences overlap well before we ever have to say goodbye or are waken in the middle of the night.
Celebrating Legacy is not going to be Facebook or Twitter or any other social network, but a place to connect, share, and discover our origins before we are gone or someone else who is close to us is no longer in reach as publicly or privately as we wish. And then, when it is time to say goodbye, it will be a place where we can erase any distance by leaving a living legacy behind where memories can live forever as if they were written, recorded, or caught on video like it was yesterday.
Right now, we are working tirelessly to finish the engineering and make the site suitable for alpha testing. As soon as we are done, everyone who has signed up for alpha testing will be our guests before we open it to everyone in beta.
I cannot thank eveyone who has already signed up enough. Like any technology, it’s the people who participate that will make it work. And I think, even if I sometimes sound more verbose as an author than most people who will contribute to Legacy Linx from time to time, that together we’ll find something I am sure of: The true measure of success is not found in wealth, but in the legacy we leave behind.
Randy Sutton is the founder and president of Celebrating Legacy and the author of three books. He is a retired law enforcement professional and one the most highly decorated police officers in the history of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. He has appeared several times on shows such as COPS and America’s Most Wanted.
Tagged as: Celebrating Legacy, Family Legacy, Randy Sutton
