If you don't write it down, it didn't happen!

Events and memories disappear pretty quickly when you don't take the time to document your life.

I’ve been working on my documenting my life. Not because I’ve achieved any great success, fame or accumulated any wealth. I’m recording my life because I want my great, great, great grandchildren and beyond to know who I was. Of course, I’m being optimisti because who knows if humanity will even be around. But just in case it is, I’ll be part of it.

I know many people who are into their genealogies. They’ve compiled names many generations back, but there’s one empty problem with this. They are just names. Once in a while you can glean a fact about their lives, but for the most part, all you know is where they came from and their names, who they were married to and the names of their children.

But what did they think? What kind of times did they live through? What did they learn? What did they do for a living? Were they happy? Did they suffer through tragedies and how did they handle them? What did they believe in? In essence, who were they.

I’ve traveled extensively all over the country, and I’m always fascinated by men who have highways, streets, and buildings named after them. What is that all about? Did they think that this would gain them some kind of immortality?

Sorry gentlemen and ladies, you are just a name. You take up a second or two of my brain time wondering who you were, but that’s about it.

There is a philosophy that states, “if you don’t write it down, it never happened.” I think of the 40,000 years of my ancestors that lived and died on this planet to produce me. I know they happened because I’m here, but that’s it. There are no lives attached to these anonymous individuals whose genes I carry.

The farthest back of my lineage I can say I personally knew is only tw0 generations. That would be my great grandfather, Francesco DeFelice. I got to spend time with him when he was in his eighties, and I was just a child. He played in Garibaldi’s Italian Army Band. He spoke no English.

I remember sitting on the porch, him with his clarinet in hand and me with my trumpet trying to play from his ancient sheet music surrounded by his feral cats, communicating only through music.

How valuable is that image to me? Need I answer? I knew three of my grandparents. That’s it. Once I pass on, if I don’t record their memory, they’ll be gone.

So, this is why I decided that although I never became a Senator, astronaut, famous writer, actor or athlete. Although I created no great break through discoveries or will ever be mentioned in history books, I will record my life. I’ll record it for those family members who follow me. So that they will know what I thought, what I believed, what kind of person and personality I was.

Leaving them a record, extends my life and lets them visit with me if only in thought. Wouldn’t it be great to sit down with your great, great, great grandfather’s biography and read about who he was and what he thought?

I have to tell you, putting down the history of your life is quite emotional. Once you start, long forgotten memories pop up. People long lost suddenly appear. You remember the crisis and the successes that you’ve tucked away. A personal journey through your life is a moving experience. One certainly worth traveling.

One absolutely wonderful thing about it is that not only are you recording your life, but the lives of those most important to you. Our lives are defined by those closest to us, and you get to include them in your story. They get to live on with you. Those that you didn’t like, you leave out. They never existed (an ironic bit of revenge there).

This is just a suggestion, but put something together so you can leave it behind. Print it out, save it in a binder, on a flash drive, whatever, and put in a safe place for your kids to pass down. I could be wrong, but I don’t think anyone wants to be forgotten.