Having the Last Say: Capturing Your Legacy in One Small Story - Softcover

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Alan Gelb is a writing coach and author of Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Steps. Now in its second edition, this slim volume has taught thousands of students to uncover special stories that overburdened admissions counselors remember. Gelb lives in Chatham, New York.

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For my grandchildren,
Ruben and Nina,
who have been having their “first says.”

PREFACE

I was born in 1950, which means that I am not getting any younger.

Like so many of my fellow baby boomers, my body feels its years when I rise in the morning and, as the comedians say, there is less hair on my head and more in my ears. Recently, I lost my parents, who died at the ages of ninety and ninety-one, and welcomed two grandchildren; these events have catapulted me into a new stage of life in which the march of time is finally undeniable. Like so many of my contemporaries, I am trying to do the work that needs to be done at this point—looking toward the future with as much fortitude as I can muster and looking toward the past in order to gain insight into what my life has been about.

Often these days, when my wife and I get together with friends, the subject comes around to how different things are now that we are no longer . . . how shall we say it? “young.” We joke about going to restaurants where we are decades older than everyone else and can’t hear each other for all the background noise. Conversation often touches on things like acid reflux, knee replacements, and long-term-care insurance. Still young enough to be somewhat stunned by such developments, we joke—and then we don’t. Having come into maturity at a time of women’s and men’s consciousness groups, we think about forming such a group to discuss issues of aging—and then we don’t. On some level, we wish to share our thoughts, concerns, and fears about growing older, but we don’t have the right vehicle for doing so. This seems a pity, as we still have sharp mental acuity and now we even have some wisdom to go along with it.

We are also confronting another challenging reality at this time of life: more and more, we are attending the funerals of close friends. That is heartbreaking but, as affecting as it is to say good-bye to those you care about, I must confess that I have sat through some of these services with what you might call a critical eye. While I am moved by the memories that are shared, on more than one occasion I have felt that I was missing the presence of the person being eulogized. Even though it makes sense to miss the presence of a person at his or her own funeral—after all, in a purely corporeal sense, they are no longer with us—I still felt that I wanted to hear that person one last time. I wanted that person to be in the room with us, and I wanted him or her to have the last say.

Now, I realize that it takes a certain kind of audacity to critique a funeral, but I’ve spent a great deal of time over the last decade helping people construct narratives that serve as a form of life review and I can’t help but feel that most of us are capable of expressing our thoughts through the written word. I believe that many of us would like to have that last say and might seize upon the opportunity if we understood what it was all about. It is the goal of this slim book to introduce this idea to readers and to motivate them to take on this assignment and succeed with it.

In 2008, I published another slim volume entitled Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Steps. In the years since its publication, my book has helped thousands of 17- and 18-year-olds learn how to approach that daunting assignment with confidence and direction. Its focus is on creating a powerful narrative in a short space, operating from the conviction that a powerful narrative—that is, a strong story—is what will lodge in the mind of the overburdened admissions counselor. Working with students has shown me just how effective the average person can be at crafting a powerful narrative—as long as he or she understands that form.

With this in mind, I began to think that there was really no reason why people in the third act of their lives could not match the grace, power, and articulation that my high school students achieve. Yes, there is less of an external motivation to do such work—the lack of a pressing deadline—but perhaps more of an internal motivation (the approach of the Ultimate Deadline). And let me point out that most baby boomers I know have never met a form of self-expression they didn’t like.

I was also convinced that the strategies I had developed over the years that have helped young people effectively express themselves could be successfully adapted to the purposes of older folks. The process of exploration and expression would really be the same; the only difference is that baby boomers are working with a much larger canvas.

I began to conceive of this third-act “assignment” as a short piece, some 500 to 1,000 words, so that the average person, if asked to, could deliver it orally with some measure of ease. In that short space, it should manage to capture the essence of the writer and convey or impart some kind of ethic or value that the writer wishes to share. In this sense, it would be akin to the ethical wills that have been an element in Jewish life since biblical times and that have stirred renewed interest among contemporary Jews who are looking to traditions that can confer more meaning in their lives. These ethical wills have served as documents whose purpose is to pass values from one generation to another. While I find these ethical wills to be worthwhile and often historically interesting, I do not think that they are especially interesting to read. This is why I felt it would make sense to try to use the narrative, a universally engaging mode of communication, to bring another dimension to what the ethical will seeks to do. In other words, it seemed ingenious to use a compelling story to convey or impart a value rather than doing so by some legalistic document that comes with no attendant reading/listening pleasure.

I recruited a diverse group of mature adults to participate in my experiment—some I knew, some I didn’t, but few would identify themselves as seasoned writers—and I asked them to create “legacies” in the form of small stories (“small” only in the sense of word count, not in terms of impact). Ultimately, if the writer so desired, these stories could be shared with family members, friends, and other loved ones—or even read at a memorial service. If the writer wished to keep the last say private, then so be it. There is still a significant benefit to be had simply in the creation of these pieces because the act of writing can go a long way toward helping people gain greater clarity about their life experiences. Since this was very much a brand-new idea, I was curious, and a bit nervous, to see if my recruits would receive it as macabre, but, in fact, the reception was quite the opposite. Almost everyone instinctively understood what I was talking about and was eager to give it a try.

We started out by mimicking an exercise I use with my 17- and 18-year-olds, in which I ask them to respond to 25 or so exploratory questions. Interestingly, many of the questions that I posed to my test group were the same as those I give to the teenagers. As soon as the writers completed this exercise, I went over their answers with them and we nailed down a writing topic. Then they went to work, producing drafts that I commented on. I can honestly say that I was amazed by the candor and expressiveness of these writers, who clearly welcomed this opportunity to review their lives. They were able to pluck out a moment that stood for something that was important to them, and they wrote stories that were meaningful to others, both in the here and now and potentially as keepsakes for future generations.

Having the Last Say offers this same opportunity to anyone who...