When I Die

When I die, I’ll leave behind an endless mountain of words for my children to sift through. I realized this today as I was reviewing the digital files of writing I’ve stored away in various places. I’m entirely unorganized, much like my thoughts and my life. I keep telling myself, “Alyse, sit down and sort through this mess,” but my goodness, this mountain is too tall to climb!

I absolutely love it, though, because when I go, and maybe before I go, I’ll leave my kids a fun challenge to find all of their mother’s writing. I wish and wish and wish every single day of my life that I had even an ounce of this mountain of written thoughts from both my mother or my grandmother. 

There’s not much of ourselves that we can leave behind that has a lot of profound meaning. Money doesn’t matter once we’re dead (it really doesn’t matter now, but ask me how I feel on this topic later), and all of our material possessions will eventually become part of the earth again, in a giant trash pile buried in the ground, much like ourselves. 

What we can leave behind that does hold some semblance of meaning, whether for our families or people who love history (like me), is our stories! 

How amazing would it be for me to have my mother’s thoughts with me now, as I have tried to navigate motherhood without her? How amazing would it be to have my grandmother’s thoughts as I go through perimenopause? Could you even imagine having access to your Great Grandmother’s words???

I’m only talking about the women in my life right now because I know their stories would have a profound impact on me and the life I’ve lived, but the same can be said about the men in our lives. If I could get my brother to pick up a pen and paper, you know I would buy him a million journals to document his thoughts on the life he’s leading. 

I have one letter from my dad that he wrote to my mother before I was born, but it gave me insight into his personality and showed me how I’m like him, and I might even get this love of writing from him. He was easily vulnerable with his thoughts to her and very honest. Oh shit, I really do get this from him, and I’ve never met him in person. Not once. See what one simple letter can do? My love of writing, being vulnerable, and inability to be anything but completely raw and honest (which I do see as a slight fault, because it has caused some drama in my life) is at least a little bit genetic! 

Wouldn’t he love to know that, that absolute bastard. 

Anyway…

There’s a connection in the words that we leave behind. Despite our generational differences, many of our emotions as we experience life end up being very similar to those who came before us. I think, in a world that feels so isolating and lonely, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have this connection to our past?

And if you do have this connection to your past, please cherish it. 

Put it all somewhere safe. 

Give it to your children and let them give it to theirs. 

Now that I think about it, I suppose that’s why it’s been so important for me to find a way to make my writing life more cohesive. How many websites, blogs, or newsletters have I had? How much of my writing is truly lost to time and life changes? I didn’t truly believe it would be this difficult to organize myself, but here I am. I’ve changed my website three or four times in the last two years. I’ve attempted to write on other platforms that claim to be “free” for authors but come with other unseen costs, like my sanity, and also the rights to the words I share. I’ve had to trial and error where my writing goes, and come to the ultimate conclusion that anything I write must still be mine at the end of the day. Until I die, at least, and then it’s for my children. Giving up ownership of my thoughts and my stories doesn’t feel good. It’s unlikely that I’ll ever be published with one of the BIG publishers, so I see no reason not to try to maintain the rights to my own art. 

What brought this all up today was my perusal of my own words. Digging through digital folders to see what I was thinking about. I discovered a folder I haven’t opened in about four years, the one I created just after I moved into my own place as a single mother for the first time, well, ever. It was the first time I had ever lived on my own, paying for my own things, my own bills, my own everything. All rules were set by me, and no man was going to tell me how to change, although he certainly did try! I want to write this story too, and I will, because it doesn’t fit in my books. I’ll work on that. My point is, four years ago, I created an office space for myself, and a folder on my computer with “business plans” for my books. I was working at my son’s school at the time, but my side hustle was going to be trying to build a book business. Mainly children’s books, so illustration was a big part of it all. Many of the plans I had were outlining how to create these books and share my art. I called it Diamond Illustration. You might remember it. You might not. It felt like a prime opportunity to create the business that I had put on hold because of the pandemic. 

What I found inside the folder was a lost outline, along with a lost story that was going to go in the very book I’m working on right now. It showcased for me how much the book has changed, and how much I’ve changed, because I see that story now as only something I can share with my children, not something that will be in the book, but still. There it was. A lost story they could stumble upon after I die, because not even I knew it was there. I had forgotten. 

But maybe it’s a story they should know. Whenever they find it, it might change their perspective on some things. Who knows how it might impact them? Who knows if they’ll ever go searching for it? Who knows if it’ll get lost forever, as many things do. Maybe a stranger will read it someday.

Who knows?