With the passing decades, people attend fewer weddings and more memorials.

My friend, hiking buddy, peer, and competitor, Brian died six days ago. Pancreatic cancer took his life within four months of the diagnosis. Fortunately, I had spent 70 minutes with him nine days earlier. We swapped stories, and all were true. We laughed at each other and mourned his early demise. We talked of deep truths and mysteries.

First Reflections on Life and Legacy

Two days before my 50th birthday, my father passed. His lung cancer was advanced when it was discovered. Every three weeks I visited for four days. Another regular flight was booked when my favorite cousin called and told me that my dad had passed.

Mom had passed about two years earlier. After losing them both so quickly I began to seriously reflect on legacy and the one-to-one correlation of life and later death.

Learning from the Lives of Others

Later in life, I was a member of a congregation that worshiped in a facility with sweeping views of San Diego, its skyline, and vistas as far as Mexico. The congregation chose to serve grieving neighbors by sharing our facility and its breathtaking views with people needing consolation or hope.

A few times I served our congregation, staff, and the neighborhood by attending memorials for people who had not worshiped there. At one of the memorials for a fellow I’d never met, the deceased was praised by friends and family for being an outstanding insurance agent. Really! In most memorials, the deceased was remembered for love of family or sense of humor or maybe for being a “good time Charlie.”

Some people might’ve found it boring or maybe even ghoulishly voyeuristic to hear the remembrances about the life of a stranger. In fact, that quiet service nurtured another sliver of maturity in me.

Those memorials aroused my thinking. What did I hope that people would think, say, and do because of my influence? The memorials primed my thinking about my legacy. We all influence others.

Learning from Brian’s Life

Among the things that I admired about Brian was his willingness to take on challenges in outdoor adventures and income property broker brokerage. He was good-natured, and candid, and often attempted assignments for clients whose optimism exceeded what the market would accommodate.

Remembering Brian, I hope to show more joy and share more humor.

Legacy

Everyone leaves a legacy. Maybe you’ll leave a fortune. If so, your heirs might multiply or squander it. Your legacy is more than that and more important. It is what people choose to imitate about your values and your actions. Your life and choices matter, even when you’re gone.

What do you want to be remembered for? Do you want to be remembered as “a great insurance salesman?” Or as someone who set an example of joy and humor?

To best influence those you care about, what should you think, say, and do more of?

Less of?

~

Your response is always welcome.

-o0o-

Terry Moore, CCIM, is the author of Building Legacy Wealth: How to Build Wealth and Live a Life Worth Imitating. Read his “Welcome to My Blog.”

Click here and find out how Terry and his team can help you make the most important financial decision of your next decade.