Dan had a haunting feeling that night that his grandkids weren’t going to amount to much. It wasn’t the first time he’d had that feeling. Their mom and dad, his son and daughter-in-law, had their own issues, which he had already seen his grandkids, now five and seven years old, unfortunately reflect. What was different this time was that Dan had the clear sense that he could trace their issues right back to him and even beyond to his own dad and granddad. When Dan looked at his grandkids, he felt as if he could have been looking at himself sixty years earlier. And for the first time, Dan had the conviction that he ought to do something about it. If it was too late for his son and daughter-in-law, maybe it wasn’t too late for the grandkids.

Dedication

Families are fun, funny, and fascinating. They’re also exasperating. Families reveal both the capacity we have for loving and caring for one another and its obstacles and limitations. We see in families the best of human nature and its worst. Yet we also see in families the capacity we have to leave a legacy. Families show us that legacies are inevitable, one way or the other. Ignore your long-term impact on others when raising your children, and you may be disappointed, even frightened, to learn the effect. On the other hand, pour the best of yourself into your children and grandchildren every day, not just your excess but beyond exhaustion, and you’ll see the beauty and benefit that sacrifice for one’s legacy can make. Families are the immediate and natural objects of our affections and thus our legacy field. Sow deeply and richly in that field, and water and weed the field continually, and you won’t regret it.

Care

The primary way in which we express our legacy through our family is to care for it. Care can look differently depending on who is supplying it and in what situation. Care may mean the dozens of little and big things that keeping a home for a spouse and child takes. Care may mean showing up at parent/teacher conferences, athletics competitions, and recitals, and ferrying youths around to lessons, jobs, and camps. Care may mean quiet times reading together, leisurely strolls and chats, or raucous games of skill or chance. Care may mean taking a shared interest in hobbies like model building or recreations like golf, tennis, or camping. Care may even mean making special creative meals, drawings, bracelets, scarves, carvings, furniture, or bouquets as frequent gifts for family members. Care has a hundred ways to express itself, even in something so simple as rising to greet one’s family member at the door on each return home. Make your legacy one of care, and you will have shared the richest of family legacy gifts.

Provision

Another main way in which we express our legacy through our family is to provide for it. Provision has two layers. One is to earn the necessary income. The other is to apply the income to acquire the goods and services your family needs. Both aspects of provision are important because they must both occur for provision to be effective. You may do great earning an income, but if you and your spouse are not also being selectively wise in using that income to acquire the necessary household goods and services, then the household won’t have what it needs. Provide well for your family in both respects, earning the income and using the income to acquire the goods and services that your family needs. Those two aspects of provision, making money and spending it wisely, can be enormously complicated and time consuming. They can also be enormously satisfying and rewarding. Make both aspects of provision a key part of your legacy. Provision is a legacy’s foundation, as one quickly learns when provision is suddenly in doubt.

Attitude

Another way you impact your family with your legacy is through your attitude. Long after we’re gone, those we leave behind remember our attitude, the spirit with which we moved through life. The residue of our remembrance is in that spirit. You may have had a dour old grandfather leavened by the sprightly spirit of your grandmother, his delightful wife. Or you may have had the kindest uncle who would sit quietly observing and subtly encouraging your play. Or you may have had a great aunt who, despite her many disabilities, always brought the life of the party. The gifts of attitude that we leave behind may be natural to our personality and disposition, or they may be trained and honed with discipline. But continually measure the impact of your attitude, and make it a positive impact in whatever natural or trained way you can. A little civility, kindness, gentleness, equanimity, patience, endurance, and forgiveness can go a very long way in leaving a legacy.

Faith

Faith can be a huge part of a legacy. Fundamentally, what every successive generation needs from the prior generation is the reasonable and firm belief in the goodness of outcomes, that we live in a just and efficacious world in which applying ourselves to the good will produce good in the long run. The parent who communicates no faith leaves the child destitute, no matter the material riches conveyed. Without faith, all is anxiety and despair. We need faith to live with the energy to pursue our purposes. When you project that faith to your family members, you give them the richest legacy. You can communicate your faith simply through your attitude, actions, spirit, and energy. Indeed, you must do so to be credible and authentic as a communicator. Yet you can also communicate your faith rationally, expressly, in words, commitments, and constructs. Long after someone passes, you’ll hear their close relatives and friends recall what the departed one would always say, in response to one situation or another. Those sayings express faith when they leave family members with the conviction that things are ultimately for the good. Believe, trust, and act, while expressing faith, and you’ll leave a fruitful legacy.

Time

The time you share with those closest to you is another legacy you can leave. Few things reveal priorities more so than where you spend your time. When you linger with family members, whether your spouse, elderly parents, or young, teenage, or adult children, you show that you value them over the other things you could be doing with your time. Leaving a sense of priority with your family members is a true gift, that you held them above other things. Spending time with family members doesn’t just mean that you were available for them if they called on you. It means that you desired to be with them, whether they needed you or not. Leave your family members the gift of your time, and they will know forever that you held them above other things that clearly meant less to you. Time proves priority.

Service

Service to your family members is another way to build a rich legacy. You may provide substantial care to your family members in the course of maintaining a household that meets all their needs while also nurturing them. Your care, ensuring that your family members never lack necessities, leaves a great legacy. Yet some find additional ways to serve their close family members, well beyond basic or even generous care. The father who tirelessly catches and returns the child’s practice baseball or softball pitches, or returns the child’s practice tennis volleys, serves the child’s aspirations and growth. The mother who makes a special dress for her daughter’s recital, or who cares for her daughter’s chickens and goats while her daughter is away at a summer ranch, likewise serves the child’s aspirations and growth. We can sometimes serve our elderly parents with home repairs, our spouse with setting up a special painting or writing room, or our adult siblings with help installing a new roof or deck. Long after the service’s material effects have dissipated, their relational and spiritual impacts will remain. Hearten your family members with your service, and your legacy will gleam.

Gifts

A prior chapter mentions that another way to build a legacy is to share frequent and regular gifts. Gifts to family members can be especially fruitful in maintaining and strengthening a bond, while communicating depth and commitment within the relationship. For givers who have the means, the federal gift tax exemption amount, currently $19,000 per year or double that figure if two spouses each give that amount, can provide a good target. The recipient must pay federal income taxes on the value of a gift beyond that amount. But cash gifts of any amount, even very small amounts, can be meaningful. Gifts all at once signal value, priority, bond, sacrifice, investment, and blessing. And gifts don’t have to be cash. The slow and poignant process of giving away to family members one’s most-treasured items of sentimental value can leave both a material and memorial legacy. 

Bequests

Your family members are so naturally the objects of your favor that the law grants them priority in inheritance. If you don’t execute a will, your spouse or children will likely inherit your estate anyway under the laws of intestacy, although not with the assurance or ease of administration that a will would have provided. With a will, you may change that priority, bequeathing your estate to whomever you wish. But your family makes a sound natural object for your bequests. No one can guarantee an inheritance. Financial reversals happen. Wars, invasions, corruption, and pestilence bring down societies, making impossible or unlikely passing wealth from one generation to the next. But to the extent you are able and circumstances permit it, you may hope and plan to bless your surviving family members with bequests. You may even set up trusts to care for them and their descendants down through the generations. Doing so cements your legacy. Later chapters address the particulars of wills and trusts.

Sacrifice

Fostering a legacy among your family members requires sacrifice. Sacrifice is at the core of legacy because sacrifice is at the world’s core. The creator lifted the burden of death from the world by giving himself to the world in sacrifice. Sacrifice saves the world from itself, as sacrifice saves us from ourselves. Sacrifice in the legacy context refers to giving up today what will make tomorrow better. Your gifts, care, time, service, and bequests to your family members are all sacrifices, investing in your family members and descendants what you could have consumed pursuing your own desires. Value those sacrifices because the world revolves around sacrifice. Your sacrifices have eternal rewards.

Reflection

What legacy would you like to leave your family? What care do you show your family members that they will remember long after you have passed? Have you so consistently provided for your family members that they have never lacked necessities? If so, what do you think you’re having done so means to them, whether they currently acknowledge it or not? What will your family members remember about your attitude or spirit, long after you have passed? Are you conveying a sound faith to your family members, both by words and actions? What times will your family members remember you spending with them, long after you have passed? Do you provide special service to your family members, beyond care and provision, that they will remember? Should you consider gifts to your children, grandchildren, or other family members as a way to strengthen your bond and build your legacy? Do you have a will, and if so, does it meet your current desires for blessing your family with bequests? What item of sentimental value might you give away now to a close family member, to make the gift and memory more special than conveying the same item through your will’s bequest?

Key Points

• Families are the natural object and prime beneficiary of our legacy.

• How we care for our family influences our legacy more than anything.

• Providing for our family forms the foundation for our legacy.

• Train and express your attitude to impact your family positively. 

• Expressing your faith in words and deeds can be a fabulous legacy.

• Sharing your time with close family members leaves a priority legacy.

• Your service to your family members enhances your family legacy.

• Gifts to your family members strengthen legacy bonds.

• Bequests to your family members carry your legacy across generations. 

• You build your family legacy on sacrifices made for a better future.

Read Chapter 6.