XI. Torchlights and Legacies
Imagine a torch stick on a wall. It could be any wall or any stick. However the torch stick looks in your mind, note several of its features. Is it straight or is it curved? Is it wood? Are there splinters? What kind of wall does it sit up against?
Now, imagine the flame on the torch. See how the flame moves about, its edges twisting and curling as the air around it pushes and pulls against the flame. Note how the center of the flame stays still at the wick. Perhaps it is blue and hot near the center, bright orange as you move outward.
This stick is placed in the middle of a dark room, its light illuminating the empty walls. The light remains fixed in the center.
Remember this torch.
This is the eleventh chapter of a twelve-part series that shares excerpts from my book, Why Listen. Below is an excerpt taken from XI. Taking the Torch, a chapter that explores what it means to carry someone’s legacy — and why we do it.
“Do you recognize the two boys standing in front of you?”
Xavier sees his birth mother’s eyes, distant, glaze over him and his brother standing in front of her. The doctor looks cautiously hopeful at Miss Adams, who recently gained consciousness after a few days in the hospital. Xavier tried to feed off that hope too, at least whatever he could. She looked almost unrecognizable as she lay there in scrubs, her face sunken and defeated.
The doctors told the family this may be the last day they have with her. She was in pain. Physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain. The pain of feeling alone, her memory taken from her, leaving her in a strange place with strange people surrounding her. I can only imagine what it was like to have the needles she used to be so good with now stuck inside her arm, delivering the drugs to relieve the pain at least a little bit.
Young Xavier was thirteen years old. And there he stood, watching as his mother struggled to keep her composure in her hospital bed. She was in severe pain, severely medicated, and confused.
Here, he observed. But it wasn’t to appreciate his surroundings this time. No, this time, he observed to understand. It was at this moment when it hit him — he never got the chance to know his birth mother.
His stomach felt empty, a strange pit of longing growing stronger only by the distance between their lives. She didn’t look like she would make it much longer. Xavier didn’t even know what to say to her. He froze.
She passed away three days later. It was morning when she passed, her family surrounding her. Xavier tells me these are the only memories he has of his birth mother.
**
Miss Adams’ torch lies bare in the middle of the dark room. There is no light cast on the walls, no warmth coming out of the flame. Just the bare stick. And whether you imagine this stick as curved or straight, splintered or smooth, the torch no longer burns.
In that moment, as young Xavier watched as his own mother passed away in the hospital, her flame burning out, he began to feel his own flame dwindle.
**
Xavier tells me he found some of the letters his mother saved years ago. He still thinks about that day in the hospital. His only memory of her. But that’s no way to remember someone.
He knew she had schizophrenia. That it was so debilitating that she couldn’t take care of him, so she gave custody of him and his siblings to her sister. He knew she kept her house spotless. He knew she liked to sew and make dresses for his sisters when they were little. But he knew little else.
He recently found some old birthday cards she kept. “It was refreshing to see the birthday cards she preserved throughout her life. Seeing how others expressed their love to her, the fact that she meant a lot to other people.”
He finds various cards she’s kept over the years. Birthday cards and well-wishes. Get well soon cards and Christmas cards. He reads through some of the handwritten notes people have sent her.
It’s amazing how much you can tell about someone just by reading these simple little cards.
As time goes on, he begins to ask more about her. He wanted to know how she interacted with people — how she showed love as a sister or a friend, as a new mother or a stranger.
Story after story, he began to collect little sparks of her life.
And though no more fire burns from her torch, that doesn’t mean her fire is gone. You see, while her torch was lit, she lit the torches in others that carried her flame. She touched the lives of many people, and each of the people she touched carried bits of her life stories with them. Perhaps if enough people share bits of her flame with Xavier, his own torch will light with enough of his mother’s memory to fill that void.
Our stories — bits of our lives we share are pieces of who we are that coalesce to form our legacies. It’s how we create meaning in our life experiences, how we live on. But stories only become legacies if someone is there to carry them.
So what does it look like to carry someone’s legacy?
Maybe it’s listening to their stories or rediscovering old stories yet untold. Maybe it’s a lesson learned that changes the way you behave, however slightly it is. Maybe it’s a mannerism you picked up from someone or a joke you heard from them.
We all carry our torches around. Some burn brighter than others. Yet we all leave bits of our flames in the torches of others, and the flames of other torches burn in our own.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be sharing excerpts and stories from my book, Why Listen in this article series. Why Listen launched December 2019 on Amazon, here is the link to buy it! If you want to connect, you can reach me here via email ackelleher17@gmail.com or connect with me on social: @andy_kelleher (IG) or LinkedIn.
