How do you want to be remembered on your death?
It’s not a question we probably contemplate too often, but this week it has been on my mind.
Perhaps it was the death of Rolf Harris, whom I met as a 20-year-old and instantly despised. He didn’t assault me, but was disparaging, ridiculing each question I asked, and laughing in my face.
Or Tina Turner, who could walk into a room and make everyone feel better. Her energy was electric, but it’s her back story – the trauma and triumphs – that is being remembered as this week draws to a close.
Or perhaps it’s the friend, whose celebration of life was held this week.
She didn’t make national headlines outside her medical speciality, but inside it she was a rock star; a medical specialist who changed the lives of so many, and left a big gaping hole in the hearts of all those she met.
Death and taxes, they say, are the only two certainties in life, and taxes we wrangle with on a daily basis.
But death, we don’t always see coming, and when we do – especially if it’s premature – the focus is more on those we leave behind; partners and children, and sometimes even parents.
Perhaps that’s what’s missing in the narrative about life. Death. And how we want to be remembered.
What matters?
If you wrote your own eulogy, even, and it needed to be based in fact – what would be the highlight?
Is it that you prized being the master entertainer, the life of the party, the comedian in the pub?
Or do you want to be remembered for the innovation you created and mastered that opened the dyke on a flow of million-dollar royalties?
Is it the public policy you championed, which will allow your children to live in a cleaner environment, and where everyone learns to cherish the open outdoors with the same passion?
Or perhaps it’s the money you’ve made, the fat superannuation balance, and the host of houses that quickly became positively geared through your ingenuity, work ethic and investment strategy?
All of those are legitimate. More than that, they can mould better lives, create inspiration and gift leadership to others.
But this week, at least to me, showed that other stories – those less well known – provide an even bigger legacy.
Tina Turner’s backstory shows that. Starting out as a domestic worker, she lost her half-sister and cousins in a car accident, later fled an abusive relationship with just 36 cents to her name. She lost two sons; one to suicide and the other to cancer. She suffered a stroke, and had to learn to walk again.
Yes, she filled our family weddings with Nutbush City Limits. And encouraged me to wear short leather skirts and fishnet stockings – in a past decade!
Triumph over tragedy
But later in life, when she opened up about the personal domestic abuse which had marked so much of her partnership, she provided so much more.
Her story, and her triumph over tragedy, was an inspiration. She wanted that hope to be delivered to so many faced with the same anguish.
She was, Simply The Best.
So was my friend, who suffered none of those hardships that colour marriages and lives, but who always saw other people – friends, colleagues and patients – as more important than herself.
And then we have Rolf Harris, who had a string of honours and awards and millions and millions of dollars in the bank, but didn’t have the character to warrant any of it.
Before his conviction and jailing on sex charges, we might have all had a different view of the international star who could sell anything from a wobble board to British Paints.
But as a young journalist, I saw a different side of Rolf Harris. And for years, decades even, I wondered why others couldn’t – no one believed that someone so utterly talented and charming on stage could be such a horrible human being, when no one was looking.
And that’s the thing we should talk about more; perhaps especially to our children whose self-judgment is so intricately linked to social media.
Who are we, when no one else is watching? And how would that be described on our death?
