Happy New Year!!

I hope you all enjoyed the holidays with your loved ones. I am so grateful for the lovely time I had with my family on Christmas Day. As I had hoped, we did play a little game after dinner where two questions were presented to everyone: what is your favorite time of day? and what is your favorite comfort food? After everyone wrote their answers on slips of paper, I collected them and read them off so everyone could list them on a separate piece of paper. They then wrote their guesses of who belonged to each pair of answers.

The answers were as fun to hear as they were enlightening. Some people were easy to guess because their answers were so obvious, but others were more difficult because we've never shared such information before now. When we were done guessing, everyone had to elaborate on their time-of-day selection. The answers were fascinating. My mom, especially, loved learning more about her family and couldn't wait to share her list with her home care giver the next day. My sons had a later conversation about what really qualifies as comfort food to them. And I started an Excel file on the family with a tab for each person. As time goes on, we'll continue the game, asking different questions during each session. It will be an easy way to record their behind-the-scenes stories and enjoy some family fun in the meantime.

Happy New Year to you all!

How Much Do You Know About Your Loved Ones From Their Perspective?

As I rise this morning, my heart still sad over this past week's tragedy, I am haunted by the glaring reminder that all of us are vulnerable to losing our lives in an instant, often without having had the chance to communicate to our loved ones the essence of who we really are from our own perspective. Most likely, eulogies and memories of our lives will someday be drawn from accomplishments seen by or evaluations made through the eyes of our survivors.

My gut tells me our loved ones will treasure memories of us even more one day if we take the time to make our own contributions to those memories while we are still here. What if a mom or a brother or a grandpa had spent time asking one of these dear lost children what she knew about her world and recording her messages: her favorite aroma, song, food; her favorite time of day, the first thing she remembered in her life; something she felt she was good at; what she thought was the best part of being a kid; her definitions of kindness, love, and fun? They would have helped her make a huge contribution to her own legacy. And she could have edited those thoughts as she matured and experienced more of the world.

If I someday lose one of you, I want to remember you from YOUR perspective. I want to remember so much more than your external achievements. I want to remember what made you tick, what was important to you, and how you felt you contributed to the universe as a person while you were here. That's what I see as a true legacy.

So during this Christmas season, I'm going to practice my beliefs. I'll find a fun way to have a conversation with my loved ones about some of the above subjects. Perhaps we will make a game of it around the dinner table, where we write our thoughts about various subjects on slips of paper, and then guess who belongs to each thought. Afterwards, I'll save a file for each person and continue to collect their thoughts as time goes on.

How about you? Can you find a way to collect all that is memorable from your loved ones while they are alive and well and contributing to this precious thing called life? Blessed Holidays to you and those you love!