What is your Legacy?

by Sharina Alongi Adkins

One week ago, while vacationing with my family in Minnesota, I learned of my mother’s sudden death. She was only 58-years-old and had not been ill, so news of her death was quite unexpected.

My family and I immediately reversed our plans to head home to Missouri that day, and we proceeded to the Chicago area to help my mother’s husband figure out what to do next. The car ride to Chicago-land seemed much longer than the seven hours it took us to get there.

With my cellular phone in hand, I took charge as the eldest child and I first called everyone whose number was programmed into my telephone. I told them of my mother’s death, I asked for their prayers, and then I began to plan my mother’s funeral. It is not usually very easy for me to ask for help, but this was an extraordinary situation, and I knew I could not do this alone.

With my willingness to receive help being the first step, all of the other pieces fell together, and I was able to cope with planning for my mother’s funeral in a big city 500 miles away from my home without any instructions from her or without a church, family or other community connected to her to help.

My mother’s wonderful boss put me in touch with a capable and caring funeral home. The funeral home made me aware of all I had to do, and they helped me navigate around a city that was unfamiliar to me. They put me in touch with a delightful and compassionate minister. The minister provided prayer support to my family and helped me in planning my mother’s funeral service. He also put me in touch with an attorney who had a colleague specializing in estates and wills. The attorney filled in all of the other details left for me to handle.

Even the sales clerks at JC Penney’s went beyond the call of duty when they helped me buy funeral clothes for my husband, our children, and myself. When they learned why I was buying all black and navy garments and shoes, they carried all of my packages to the car and gave me warm hugs and prayers. Last, but not least, my dear husband took charge of our two small children for three days without the usual detailed instructions from me, and he provided support, comfort, love and a touch of humor at appropriate times.

Before I left for vacation two weeks ago, it had become very clear to me that I wanted to leave my children a legacy of a mother who enjoyed her work and her life. I knew I loved to write, coach and sing, so I dedicated myself to planning my own work and life around pursuing my passions. I declared my mission statement of helping all those around me create work and life situations they loved so that they could use their gifts to joyfully serve the world.

My mother had lived a very unhappy life, and I had spent many years of my adult life feeling unable to embrace my happiness as long as she was so miserable. Many of my own coaching sessions with my mentor coach have been spent with me trying to overcome the legacy of my mother’s pain.

In a way, my mother’s funeral was an independence day for me, because as I prepared to speak and sing for her service, I realized that my mother chose most of her unhappiness. She chose an attitude of helplessness and refused to ask for help from those who were able to help her. She chose not to pursue her passions or use her gifts to serve the world. She hid her proverbial light under a barrel. Her legacy was one of poverty, suffering, and debt. Her sudden death from a massive heart attack was directly related to her years of chain smoking, not going regularly to the doctor, and the stress from the enormity of her credit card debts.

As a business and personal coach, I have often used my mother’s story to illustrate to people what their lives can become when they do not use their Creator-given talents to joyfully serve the world. We are all given talents that are meant to be enjoyed and shared with others. When we use the talents that give us joy, we serve the world fully, and the world gives back to us.

My mother was a very bright teenager and a brilliant painter. She was hired right out of high school as a blood technician for a major Chicago-area hospital and had won awards for her chemistry projects. She also painted exquisite oil paintings that some have mistaken for Monet’s. My mother was destined to leave a wonderful legacy. Sadly, she chose differently.

Instead of accepting a very generous scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago, or continuing her career as a hematologist, my mother chose a different legacy. When she was twenty-years old, she married my father and went along with his dreams of owning an Italian restaurant in Chicago, and later she went along with his dreams to move to the Missouri Ozarks and retire on a small Sicilian-style farm, even though she was a confirmed city-girl. She chose a life with my father that took her far from her dreams and ended in his death in 1977.

My mother remarried in 1979 and traveled even further from her dreams by helping her husband own and operate a gas station. In 1983, that husband left her a widow, and in 1985, she married her last husband, who took her back to her homeland in the Chicago area, but he did not help her recognize her gifts or pursue any of the passions for which she was created. Instead, he went along with her in the pursuit of various addictions. My mother’s legacy was one of a broken woman.

When we buried my mother on June 1, it was a gloriously sunny day—the first sunny day since we had arrived in the Chicago area. The minister reminded us that Sunday, June 3, would be Pentecost, and that new life was all around us in our little children playing among the gravestones, and in the springtime budding of the trees and flowers in the surrounding cemetery gardens. My younger brother and I wept for our mother and what she could have been had she followed her dreams.

At the funeral service earlier that day, my mother’s mother wept for her only daughter. We children and my mother’s only brother wept for the legacy that could have been. We realized my mother’s life had been cut short long ago by the choices she made. We now have to learn to let go of our dreams for her and the relationship we longed to have with her. We have faith in our healing and look forward to building our legacies for our children.

May you leave the world with a legacy of joy. Create the work and the life you were meant to live. Do not leave your children or your friends mourning for the life you could have lived. Live it now! Life is too short to wait to be happy. Make choices now that will lead you to your legacy. If you need help, call on a coach, counselor or another wise advisor.

May you embrace the gifts you were given and joyfully share them with the world!