Monday Motivation
As I wrote about the experience of moving my grandmother this week, I was compelled to share a part of it with you, for the connection to your lives, and also our shared work. There is something powerful about the work we do together each day that feels like inheritance now to me, for all of the receivers. It is work we pass on, work that does good for the world, work that for our business, our patients, and each other impacts who we are and the lives of many. We give projects, awards, innovation, training, workshops, messages, medicine to support healthy living and extend lives. Our brain power, our hearts, our precious time, are all over our work. It will live on. We give what we do now to future generations and I find that thought beautiful and motivating as we start this week. Perhaps you may too. Make it a great week ahead in your #OneBeautifulLife.
The Inheritance
We are gathering my grandmother's belongings
From the bedroom, the closets, the kitchen hutch, the small wooden dainty desk.
From the bedroom, the closets, the kitchen hutch, the small wooden dainty desk.
As her memory becomes lost at the age of 98, we find a century of things.
The letters from 1942 she wrote to her parents,
My grandfather's envelope stamp from the 1960’s,
A directory of zip codes that cost $1, forever a resource for her letter writing,
A journal of her trips,
Her beloved kitchen sign from the farmhouse.
The letters from 1942 she wrote to her parents,
My grandfather's envelope stamp from the 1960’s,
A directory of zip codes that cost $1, forever a resource for her letter writing,
A journal of her trips,
Her beloved kitchen sign from the farmhouse.
People speak of inheritance as though it is money
This isn’t so.
This isn’t so.
Inheritance is memories bottled up in hearts and minds, and in objects,
Like the old wooden cutting board that served us ham for decades, at the farmhouse gatherings, too old to ever use again, being pulled from the cupboard.
Too old to keep, never too old to cry tears and share laughter over.
Too old to keep, never too old to cry tears and share laughter over.
The inheritance is the discovery of the normal things, together, that hold value understood by the shared hands of time for those that were there, together.
And so we gather the belongings, the memories, a lifetime of hers we’ve known, and much we haven't, with a lineage of hers and mine that have overlapped for not even half of her chapters, all gathered as the inheritance
Of memory she no longer has
Of memory we do
Of memory we pass on
Of memory we do
Of memory we pass on
This is the inheritance we gather
Memory and time
This is the substance of the sand in the hourglass
Memory and time
This is the substance of the sand in the hourglass
It gathers and passes, but in the glass, we find ourselves reflected, always.
No comments:
Post a Comment