At an Ash Wednesday service years ago. the sweet, caring pastor, always so full of compliments, said as she put ashes on my forehead, "For you are dust and to dust you shall return.” What? How rude! I thought I was important!
Sometimes we become so full of ourselves that we miss the big picture: We are just a few of billions of people who will all be gone someday and be replaced by billions more.
The many articles I have written over time will have been long forgotten—unless I got sued, which never happened. Don’t we have any impact? I never thought of my father’s legacy as a part-tie opera singer, but he seems to have passed on a love of singing, which I didn’t acquire until long after he was gone.
What about my own legacy? I like to think two of my grandchildren, age 6 and 7, will remember me for a long time, and that is my form of immortality. After living next door for two years, the family moved to Blacksburg just a month ago. They called recently and said they missed me.
Once or twice a year, I see 14-year-old grandson of Pickett and her first husband, who does call me "Grandpa Mike." Living in California, he was often a difficult child, brilliant but antisocial We weren't close, but I appreciated it when he and two of his brothers went to see me singing as the Baker's father in "Into the Woods" here in South Boston. I didn't think the show registered, and he may have fallen asleep.
Then five years later, last May, we were sent a video of him and his classmates. He was performing in "Into the Woods." He had a solo as Jack in the Beanstalk, singing "Giants in the Sky." He sounded great.
Maybe we will all be dust, but that made me feel pretty good.
Mdoan96@yahoo.com
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