Some Reflections on Posterity - May 8 2026

 

Some Reflections on Posterity

May 8 2026

I imagine great grandfathers

I’ve never met.

Who passed on a name.

Perhaps some minor legacy

in wealth or reputation,

an echo of identity 

in old country food

an ethnic dance

a colourful turn of phrase.

I know there were greats, of course,

but no memory

has been handed down

of the men who actually were.

The fact they existed, yes;

but no warp and weft of a life,

not even a given name.

Certainly not a picture

in sepia tones

of a proud man in formal clothes

with an ornately opulent beard,

standing unnaturally still

for a long exposure photograph. 

So did he think, once he’d attained an age

when a man seeks meaning in life

and contends with existential angst,

that a long line of descendants

spreading down through time

was where he would find it?

That he was not a loose thread

but a stitch in a tapestry?

Not a blip of a life

but a link in a family?

That he might find a kind of immortality 

in memory

continuity

and respect for the past?

The meaning

a young man thinks he can find

with the possessions

he works hard to acquire,

the status

and social ladders he climbs,

and the acts of creation

he might leave behind.

Which, like most human endeavour

soon enough

turn to dust;

as ephemeral

as we ourselves.

But then, my people are matrilineal,

so it’s great grandmothers

and all the greats that came before

I should be thinking of.

Women, who didn’t leave even a name

to pass down to their progeny.

Whose children

  — whom they birthed, and nurtured, and loved

and sacrificed for —

left for faraway continents

or foreign wars.

And whose descendants 

not only speak an alien tongue

but don’t know where they came from

or really much care. 

The irony

in our notion of posterity

is to presume that future generations

will, if not venerate

at least remember us,

while we, in turn, forge on through life

with our eyes fixed firmly in front.

Just as I suspect

that in a moment of reflection

  — when life was hard

and introspection a luxury — 

she, too, considered her legacy.

That, in a sense, she thought about me

 — at least hypothetically —

while I

uninterested

and ignorant of history 

am oblivious to her.

Considered her legacy,

never imagining

that my ingratitude

would betray her life’s work.

That I would never look back

let alone glance

at the long familial line

of begottens and begets.

That my thread would unravel

and the tapestry fade;

abandoned

in some ancestral home

that was never handed-down,

we lost track of

long ago.