Intangible legacies rely on taking time to intentionally connect and share what is most important to us. This insight is profoundly important for relationships of caregiving and the mutual reconciliation and healing that stem from intergenerational care. When asked what he learned from end-of-life care of his father, with whom he had shared a lifelong contentious and distant relationship, Ram Dass spoke of their conversations in the final months of his father’s life, and the gratitude he felt for the common understanding that eventually emerged. “Otherwise,” as he put it, “we would have missed the whole show.”
A lifetime habit of “multitasking” may have taken its toll on the lost art of conversation. Fortunately, there is a revival of interest especially in intergenerational communication. The StoryCorps website can be a source of tips on gathering family stories. A growing interest in creating face-to-face conversation space in a tech-driven world has inspired initiatives ranging from The Family Dinner Project (sparking engagement at the family table) to The Conversation Project (providing starter guides for talking with loved ones about end-of-life care).
Long distance grandparents may be driving the surge in technology-facilitated relationships. In 2015, The Pew Research Center reported that two thirds of Americans over 65 use social networking sites, a tenfold increase since 2005. Other tech tools include Facetime or Skype, digital scrapbooks, recordable storybooks, or simply sharing a family story in a video clip recorded on a smartphone. However, surprisingly, in a world of texting and email, children still love to get snail-mail addressed to them personally. At age six, my daughter cherished an envelope she received in the mail from her grandmother. The contents: A decorative Band-Aid with a Post-It that read, “I know this is your favorite color. Love, G.”
It is important whenever we can to create a written account of our lives and the meaning we have drawn from them. Our reflections can be set down in memoirs, legacy letters, recorded oral histories, and other narratives. The books and website of Rachael Freed are a great place to explore these options.
At a time of newfound longevity, Newhouse believes that greatest legacy of people now over 65 may be to pioneer new approaches to living with meaning and purpose while aging authentically. Her book brings us moving stories of coping and resilience in the face of challenges in health, personal and financial loss, and dependency. Ashby Village readers will relate to her thoughts about innovation and community as resources for living a full life supported by caring exchange. These ideas build on a movement to reclaim the role of elder in a world that desperately needs our service.
Over 20 years ago, Gray Panther founder Maggie Kuhn, then 88, exhorted elders to leave the world a better place by contributing their experience to families and communities as “mentors, mediators, monitors, mobilizers, and motivators.” Today, increasing numbers of elders are assuming these roles and living legacies in a range of capacities, including volunteers, navigators, community organizers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, and work in nonprofit and social purpose organizations. Encore.org estimates that an additional 20 million people over 65 are looking for opportunities to find such roles. The new imperative is to build paths that connect people in this huge 65+ human resource to needs in their communities. Doing so would, indeed, be a legacy of the heart.