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How Childlessness and Impending Apocalypse Have Made Me Rethink the Concept of “Legacy”
Did we forget we’re supposed to be forgotten?
Someday, I will be forgotten. Probably sooner than I’d hoped.
I’ve always been the record-keeper in my family. I researched my family tree with a driving passion. I needed to know the names of my great-grandmothers. I needed to know where they came from, what they did, who they married.
Not everyone has the privilege to do this. I took full advantage of that privilege and collected all those names and dates and plugged them into my family tree software. I printed out copies for all the relatives. I labeled and scanned all the old photographs. I even made lists of all the family names that I particularly liked so I could consider them passing them on to a child of my own.
But I didn’t have children.
I never would have guessed, all those years ago when I was dutifully and intricately recording all those branches of the family tree, that my branch would stop with me.
This is the end of the line.
When I am gone, I will be gone. There will be no great-granddaughter who will, someday in the future, be digging through the family tree records, hoping to find out more about her great-grandmother Yael.
I have two grandaunts who did not have children. Like me, that was not their choice. One of them, Aida, my paternal grandfather’s sister, died at the age of 21 after suffering from health problems her whole life. The other, Ruth, my maternal grandfather’s aunt (so actually my great-grandaunt), had a stillborn child, years into her marriage, and there were no living children to come after.
Even before I knew I would not have children, I felt a very strong connection to both of these women. Aida was the eldest child of four, just like me, the guardian of her family. And I was named after Ruth (one of my middle names), which made me feel very close to her.
I have always felt such a strong need to tell their stories. I understand that they will be forgotten if I do not.
I don’t even know where Aida’s grave is. I am the last living relative who even remembers her…
