Leaving a Legacy

His dark hands, like burnished bronze weathered for decades, each year of his life etched into the lines around his knuckles, his wrists. Always carrying a tool - a hatchet, a hammer, a bible. His mischievous smile with twinkling eyes letting you know he was up to something, but that you were still safe with him. That bald head with a ‘chocolate chip’ (see it?), his pockets full of candy at church, his arms full of strength, assurance, and unconditional love.

My grandfather, Paul, was born in 1912 and died in 1991 when I was fourteen years old. That’s all the time I had with him - fourteen years - but it was enough to experience the Core Four values I would come to embrace as my own.

LOVE

For the first five years of my life, we shared a looped driveway, our house on one side and Grandma and Grandpa’s on the other. He would gather me into an embrace, smile when he had a surprise for me (like a mouse he caught in a corn barrel), and the way he loved - sacrificially- just poured out of him every day. I saw it in his constant acts of service - chopping wood and gathering it up for our fireplaces, feeding the hens and gathering the eggs (and sometimes ‘disappearing’ the roosters if they chased and frightened his small grandchild… mmm, soup!) Even when he was upset at one of his adult children for something, he would give advice, maybe holler at them, but I’d still watch him chopping and gathering wood for their fireplaces.

I learned quickly that love isn’t always soft. Sometimes it brings words that are necessary to growth; sometimes it looks like allowing someone to reap the consequences of their actions but provides a way to start over. Love doesn’t always mean liking someone. We can show love to others without embracing their negative or hurtful behaviors. Love takes a lot of forgiveness - sometimes we’ll get burned in the process of loving others, but that’s on them, not on us.

KINDNESS

For as long as I can remember, Grandpa drove a brown Ford truck that was progressively more rickety each year. Grandma didn’t drive at all, so it was always him in the driver’s seat - to the grocery store, to church, anywhere and everywhere. And if he was driving alone somewhere, you’d better believe he’d end up with a passenger because - to my grandmother’s great dismay - Paul picked up every hitchhiker he came across. “WHAT IF THEY ROB YOU!?” was her biggest fear, to which he calmly replied, “They won’t do that. I just give them whatever I have in my wallet anyway before they get out.”

His heart was so filled with kindness that it flowed out of him. Sure, he was loud, got angry, hated when someone drove slow in front of him, yelled when we did something dangerous - he was human and had emotions just like everyone else. I learned that we can be kind without being perfect; we can be angry with someone and not denigrate them. They can treat us poorly, but we don’t have to reciprocate.

ACCEPTANCE

Paul was used to being ‘different’. Even in his late 70s before his death, he still had a thick Hungarian accent. He and his siblings didn’t speak English as children when they arrived in the U.S., and there were no translators at school to help out, so they were just left in the classroom to learn nothing, but passed through each grade, year after year. Paul began teaching himself English on his own and helped his brothers and sisters to learn, too.

He didn’t discriminate. He didn’t care what you looked like, what color your skin was, where you were born, how much money you had - and even when others around him showed racist or sexist tendencies, Paul made it very clear that he accepted everyone and there was no pedigree needed to be his friend or part of his family. I learned that our differences make us unique, not bad.

INCLUSION

Perhaps the most important thing I learned from my grandfather’s love, kindness, and acceptance of others is that we are all included in it. When Paul wasn’t chopping wood, repairing something, tending chickens or the garden, watching grandkids, helping strangers or family members, stoking a fire, gathering walnuts, or any of the hundreds of other ways he served people - he was praying. And there was NOBODY he didn’t pray for, whether he liked them or not. He would fall asleep praying because he included every person and every situation they were all going through.

Whether we believe in God or not has no bearing on what we can glean from this part of his legacy, because the point is that PAUL believed and he believed so strongly that he would even bring his enemies up in prayer. EVERYONE was included because EVERYONE was worthy of love, kindness, acceptance, and forgiveness in his eyes.

Whatever our beliefs, this idea that ‘nobody is beyond help’ is crucial. I learned that, regardless of my disagreements with others, my respect for their humanity should not be diminished and that they are flawed humans just like me. On our worst days, we need the love, kindness, acceptance, and inclusion of others the MOST - so we should be the first to give those things to others on their worst days as well.

LEGACY

What impact do you want to leave? One of my friends was also my business coach early on, and she is adamant about the idea of legacy which is how I began the process of thinking about these values to begin with. While I was greatly shaped by my grandfather in those short fourteen years, I’ve learned lessons from many other people that I’ve kept near to my heart my whole life. I feel driven to pass these values on through my writing, like it’s my God-given purpose, and though it’s easy to get frustrated and want to shove my computer off the desk some days, it’s worth it to me to persist.

So, here I go. Wanna come with?

SJS