The TFAP artistic team piloted a performance, The Dead Giveaway: A Comedy in One Final Act, at an end-of-life planning workshop in collaboration with the Austin Jewish Community Center Senior Adult Programs department on February 27, 2015.
Photos by Audrey Long, ARCOS Films
Storyteller is Bernadette Nason
Here at The Final Acts Project, one of the words we like to use is “legacy.” It’s a big, fancy word. We’d all like to leave our legacy. But what exactly does it mean, and why is it important?
I believe that “legacy” means capturing the essence of an individual’s life, the part of a person that will live on beyond death. Sadly, the full richness of a person’s life is often not on display until a funeral service, where an entire personal history is recalled by loved ones in a special ceremony. Isn’t it strange that often, we wait until someone has died to honor his or her life and give it the remembrance it deserves?
Because our society is often uncomfortable discussing death, focusing on someone’s legacy also may be neglected. No ceremony highlights someone’s legacy until that person has achieved an advanced age, is gravely ill, or has died. With our mortality in mind, it is natural to recognize the legacy of our dearly beloved family and friends sooner, as well as defining our own legacy. Certainly, our accomplishments and the way we act toward others convey our deepest held values and beliefs. But it’s often hard to describe a person’s legacy, the wake left by one life’s passage that continues to ripple outward long after the person has died.
Here’s where the creative arts can help. We may not all be artistically gifted, but we are all creative by nature. Creative expression has many forms: drawing or painting; decorating; building a handmade craft; journaling or writing a letter; creating jewelry; or making a collage, or a photo album. Some people can express themselves through singing or playing an instrument. The arts are a wonderful way to recognize the impact that someone else has had on your life, as well as to create something that expresses a deep desire within you.
One way I have tried to be creative in recognizing the legacy of my loved ones is by writing them “agape letters” (agape is Greek for love). In the letters, I have written those things that I would want my family and loved ones to know if they were on their deathbeds. Someday, they will be gone. So why wait?
Every family has at least one poet. My great-grandmother, Inez Lea Hannah, was our family’s poet. Between the ages of 12 and 13, she began writing poetry focused on the rural landscapes of the Ozarks. By the time she was eighteen, her poems were being picked up by the local papers. Unfortunately, very few of her writings remain. Mostly stuffed into drawers, old shoeboxes and now fragile books through the years, I still managed to slowly piece together a small collection of her work. This is the part of her legacy I know she would want our family to enjoy, and enjoy I do. My great-grandmother was great admirer of Robert Frost, and I often imagine her as a young girl longing to write in his rural, New England voice, though her tradition was distinctly rural, Midwestern. A book of Frost’s poetry sat next to her Bible on the old nightstand her entire life. I have often wondered what happened to those two treasured books when she was finally moved into the nursing home. Outliving most of her children, my great-grandmother not only had great genes, but was more perceptive than most; I could see it in her piercing blue eyes every time I lied to her about walking along the railroad tracks in town. She had her own spies during our summers at the farm. She also could sense controversy in the family long before it erupted, yet she often remained hesitant to interfere in the business of others (though I do think she secretly enjoyed, a little too much, her neighbor’s daily rounds of gossip).
There are so many wonderful memories of her I carry forward as a sustaining force in my life. She was the best cinnamon toast maker in the family; she never flinched when I had to give her a B12 injection, and she could be a ferocious worrier (a habit she mysteriously bequeathed to me). I not only keep her poems safely tucked away for the next generation to enjoy, but wear her simple gold wedding band on my hand as a daily reminder of her story, which has now become her legacy, and a part of mine. May she live on, and on, and on…
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