Legacy

 Many many years ago when Mum and Dad were hale and hearty but thinking ahead, Mum asked me what I would like her to leave me in her will. I was horrified.

"There's nothing you have that could ever replace you and Dad" was my reply and at the time I meant it.

As the years passed and my beautiful Mum succumbed to Alzherimers and my darling Dad to heart disease, somehow the things that they owned, that had graced their walls and mantlepieces for years, began to take on more meaning.

In October 2024, when I went over to help my fabulous Middle Sis start the heartbreaking task of emptying out their home, I was encouraged to choose the things I wanted to take back with me to remember our beloved parents. There were some weird choices.

These are my Dad's academic caps, from Grammar school to PhD.

This is his university football team photo. That's him front row right.

I rescued a piece of rock from the garage, kept in a plastic bag marked Dive 2, which I knew had come from his submarine dives on to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 1994. It's a piece of the infamous Black Smokers that spew out molten rock to create the ocean floor and continue pushing the continental plates apart.

Image Credit: https://www.le-comptoir-geologique.com/black-smoker-glossary.html

Here is my piece of the ocean floor, retrieved by robotic arm for my Dad as he watched on from 3000m below sea level. Now on my fireplace....

And of course there are the sculptures from Zimbabwe:

All these pieces surround me with the sense of my childhood and my oh so loved parents. They have little value except to bring back the memory of the days they arrived in our home, the stories told by Dad of their acquisition and the delight (and sometimes otherwise!) displayed by Mum as she found places to locate them.

Of course there are Mum's things too. She loved art whether it was paintings, photography, ceramics or unusual jewellery. She loved to visit galleries showing local artists and on one occasion she fell in love with this oil pastel picture she called 'The Three Ladies'. 

I couldn't get a good photo of it at night sadly, the light and the flash are reflected, but you can see the three faces all peering down at....what is it? What are they doing?? 

Mum loved to challenge her guests to speculate about what they were looking at so intently. I love to remember this and hear her mischievous suggestions. Are they telling fortunes? Playing cards? 

Not to be left out, my Dad found an artwork by the same artist. He was learning classical guitar at the time so of course he chose this piece. Again, I haven't been able to capture it well, it's now in my music room...

They're not marvellous pieces but the sense of home and love and life they evoke cannot be measured.

And just for good measure, here is one of Mum's originals gracing the stairs into my sewing room...

I remember when she brought it home from painting classes. It hung in our home until they moved to the UK, was passed on to my Bestie's beautiful Mum who passed it back to me when she down sized and I moved back to Australia. So much life it has witnessed.

Well that's enough nostalgia for now. I have Mum's table cloth on my table, I wear her jewelery constantly and during the last show, my make-up scarf was one gifted to me by Dad.

I am surrounded by the outward physical reminders of their extraordinary and enduring lives and love. That's some legacy.