WHAT WILL BE THEIR MEMORIES?

In the last few weeks, I've had many opportunities to ponder my fate!! It began with my 69th birthday in July. On that day, I had a memory flash to the day my parents signed the mortgage for their first home. The year was 1954, and we were gathered in our brand new living room. They marveled that, through regular payments, the house would be theirs in 1984. We girls would be 42. I remember trying to imagine what I would look like at 42...old, certainly, wrinkled, probably. Now I was 69--older than my father had been when he died, and I looked just like I'd imagined I would look at 42. Old age is a strange phenomenon in one's life; it's retrospective, frightening really, and certainly not for the faint-of-heart or sissies!!

A week or so after my birthday brooding on my advanced age, I visited with my mother-in-law, who's 96. She showed me 3 or 4 small journals which she calls her quote books. It's a hobby that Peggy and I have in common--we love to collect quotations, poems, song lyrics. Hers are neatly written in small journals, and she includes her own poetry and personal thoughts with her gleanings from the writings of others. Mine? They're in an online journal, old three-ring binders several, on the backs of envelopes, etc.

Peggy held her little journals tightly to her tiny bosom and said tearfully, "These are so dear to me, but I know you kids will have no use for them and throw them away when I'm gone." Shortly afterward, I went for my annual health check-up and mentioned to my doctor that I was experiencing some shortness of breath lately...my oh my!! This statement prompted a series of heart stress tests, ending in a recent day in Emanual Hospital's ICVR unit for an angiogram. Wow!! Although I didn't want to think about it, my mind kept reverting to panic mode! What if there's really something wrong? What if I have a bad heart? What legacy have I left for my posterity? What will be their memories of me? Will those "things" which are dear to me be thrown out after I'm gone? (Angiogram revealed the need for a change of medication and weight loss...Whew...I have a little time). Tomorrow, I'm going to visit a friend my age who thinks that she is dying--a fact her doctor is hiding from her she says. She knows he isn't telling her because he asked her for a hug. She wants to put her affairs in order and asked me to help her write down her testimony of Jesus Christ for her children. So here I am, on a warm, warm Sunday morning contemplating how much time I have to get my affairs in order. Let's see, there's:

1. My genealogy: Binders full of pictures, memorabelia, documentation, etc. of hundreds of ancestors whom I've found through my years of genealogical research. How I love these wonderful people and treasure what I know of them and the small mementos I have of many of them! But, my family will never know them as I do unless I bring this chaos to order!!

2. Pictures: Boxes and boxes and buckets and computer files of pictures--to be organized, filed, discarded, labeled.....3. Personal history to write. I do have that started; I got an A on an autobiography I wrote for a personal history writing class that I wrote in 1964. And my journals, personal writing, and novel gathered up..

4. The Grandchildren Quilt Project. I'm sending quilt #11 out tomorrow. Only 6 more to go. Then, I move on to the Children Quilt Project. And then....

Hmm...the tasks before me sound delicious...fun to do...Maybe this winter?? Because, right now there's:

1. This little guy...Yuri...our ten pound seventeenth grandchild. He's the love child of our son, Tom. With that little Buddha-tummy, Yuri needs a warm, cuddly afghan to keep him warm this winter.

2. And this guy...Vale, who returns August 29th, to the elite Kennedy Boarding School to begin his freshman year of high school.

3. And these guys, who seem to think they need three meals a day and a clean house...

Maybe I can work it all in...the present and the future.....before that hug from my doctor comes.

Contemplatively, Mom