Leaving a Legacy
My perspective of life itself changed forever the day my mother-in-law, Teresa, died. The moments and days following her passing are a slow-motion movie in my mind. Once her physical body finally found rest, the legends of her life immediately began to boil to the surface of the earth. It seemed as if even creation couldn’t wait to tell its side of her story.
For days, I listened to psalms full of adventure, kindness, brutal honesty, strength, risk and integrity. Her body was gone yet the spirit of her personhood seemed to be stronger than ever. By the time we reached her Celebration of Life I was confident we were honoring the continuance of a legacy—not the loss of a life.
The most remarkable thing about Teresa’s approach to living was its simplicity. She built a meaningful life by showing up whenever she could. She lived to serve her God and her people, and that was enough to change the part of the world in which she was assigned.
While I’m comforted by the realization that prioritizing faith and family is enough to leave behind a lasting impact, I’m still deeply disappointed we are living life without her.
About a year in, I realized that this loss was not something we were going to move past, but something we were going to carry with us for the rest of our lives—especially around the holidays. Not as a weight, but as a memorial. A commemorative void in our family that reminds us that life doesn’t have to be complicated. Faith and family will be enough to get through every year, and so far, this has proven to be true.
It took three years. Three years for our family to gather and take a professional family photo without her. Three years to accept that documenting today isn’t a sign of her absence, but a testament to her legacy. And even after three years, I’m still in awe of the fact that Abb and I are the matriarchs of our family, that Lucas and Brent are now responsible for being the leaders we’ve needed them to be, and that the kids have been left in the hands of us amateurs. It’s not the plot twist we wanted to deal with, but it’s the one we were dealt.
Today, as I look at these photos of all of us together, I know she would be proud of our attempts at a new normal—but would be quick to remind us that starting strong matters far less than finishing strong, and no one finished stronger than she did.