Day 149: All last week was talk of memorials and the markers we use to link us to our past - to our dead - but what about the markers we create to link us to our future?
This year of towels posts is meant to memorialize my dear mother, but it is also a way for me to link her (and me along with her) to her posterity.
Yesterday, I talked a little about the story I wrote and how it twisted and turned until it ended up linking me to my ancestors, but part of the reason I wrote the story was a sneaky way of passing down some good solid advice, in the manner of my mama, to my children and their children, too.
In the dedication, I told them to read between the lines. I told them that there may be examples to follow. Advice to be gleaned. Sometimes, the best way to say it, isn't to come right out and say it, but show it, instead. The name of the series is "The Making of Saying Goodbye" and it, too, holds a message. Sure, the title of the movie being made in the story is Saying Goodbye, so it's about what happens to the characters during "The Making of Saying Goodbye" but the whole story encompasses the different ways we must say goodbye in a lifetime, and learning to decipher when it's necessary to say goodbye, and when we don't need to say it - when saying hello is better.
I didn't actually set out to be sneaky about infusing the story with examples, but two things happened that changed my opinion. I had a cancer scare in 2010 that made me evaluate my life and what had been left unsaid to my family, and then in 2013 we lost my niece-in-law. She left three young daughters quite unexpectedly, and I re-evaluated what I wouldn't want left unsaid to my posterity, and also what my niece would have wanted to convey to her daughters. What goes into the making of saying goodbye when you don't know when it'll need to be said? I decided it is better to throw it all out there - leave nothing unsaid for a better time. The result? A heartfelt story, and a year's worth of towel posts.
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