OPINION: On legacies and broken washing machines

Eric and Kassandra’s washing machine broke on my watch.

Home alone, washing a “quick” load of sheets that flopped listlessly back and forth in the drum like a hooked trout for more than three hours, I suspected the machine was done for.

Eric got home and, after a little exploration, confirmed it. Unfortunately, potential repair costs would be at least half the cost of a new machine. Time to upgrade.

To assuage my guilt for breaking it and to thank them for their kind hospitality of late, I offered to buy the new machine. They picked one out, I handed over my credit card, and something I have absolutely no idea how to operate — and that resembles a space capsule — was installed. All well and good. Exactly how commerce and guilt should operate.

Except an odd thought occurred to me, and I’ve spent an unnatural number of minutes thinking about it: Could I possibly buy some kind of stamp for the machine that would identify it as the “Susan Morgan Memorial Washer”?

Am I the only one thinking about legacies these days? As someone of a certain age who’s spent a ridiculous amount of time in doctors’ offices recently, it’s hard not to wonder how — or even (shudder) if — I’ll be remembered when my time comes. What are other people my age doing about this? I don’t plan on crossing the Great Divide anytime soon, but it’s definitely too late to amass the millions I’d love to bequeath to the Anchorage Museum so I could maybe get a small gallery or modest hallway named after me. And I never did write the book I’ve been talking about since the third grade. Silly me, I wrote for newspapers. Here today, recycled tomorrow. No lasting legacy there.

“What if,” the little voice whispers at 4 a.m., “you squandered the years you were given? Plenty of time to write books, build buildings, endow charitable funds.” Yet, I — and most people I know — didn’t do those things. We went to work, raised children, shopped for groceries, cooked dinner for the trillionth time, and, yes, did the laundry. We laughed and cried and argued and swooned. We loved and lost and loved again. All those singularly perfect imperfect human things.

Some say our children are our legacy — if we’re lucky enough to have them — but I balk a bit at that. My children are very much their own beautiful creations. I was blessed and honored to be there from the beginning, but they deserve all the credit for the magnificent humans they have become. This leaves me here, seriously contemplating defacing a brand-new washing machine. In the meantime, a sweet thing my not-particularly religious grandfather used to say comes to mind: “I’ll say a prayer for you if you say one for me.”

How about expanding that just a bit? I’ll remember you if you remember me.

Susan Morgan is a freelance writer. She lives in Anchorage.

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