When the tally of one’s life is finally taken, it will not, I suspect, be the number of books on the shelf, nor the medals on the wall, nor even the bank balance (however modest or immodest) that counts for much. These things, though not unpleasing in their way, have the durability of soap bubbles: they shimmer briefly, delight the eye, and then vanish with a faint pop. No, the true measure of a life is something subtler, less tangible, and yet infinitely more enduring, the love we have given and received, and the ways in which that love lingers after us like the perfume of a long-faded flower.
Love, however, is an odd sort of legacy. Unlike property, it cannot be willed, deeded, or taxed by any bureaucrat, however enterprising. Unlike reputation, it cannot be engraved on brass plaques or preserved by the strained eloquence of funeral speeches. Love, if it remains at all, survives only in the memory of gestures,kind words spoken at the right moment, hands held in difficult hours, laughter shared when laughter seemed impossible. It clings, not to marble or stone, but to the living fibres of human hearts.
I once knew a woman whose life could only be described as modest. She worked in a post office, lived in a small terrace house with peeling paint, and never travelled further than the next county. Her wardrobe was unremarkable, her bank account perpetually lean, and her name never appeared in the local paper. And yet, at her funeral, the church overflowed. Neighbours, colleagues, and friends pressed shoulder to shoulder, spilling into the churchyard. Each one carried a story of her kindness: a hot meal delivered when illness struck, a letter carried through a snowstorm, a child minded so that an exhausted mother could sleep. By every material measure, her estate was small; by the only measure that matters, her legacy was immense.
We often mistake grandeur for greatness, as if significance must arrive with trumpets and banners. But love does not require scale. Indeed, it thrives best in the small and faithful rather than the dramatic and rare. A simple act, repeated consistently, has more power to shape lives than a grand gesture performed once in a blue moon and then fondly reminisced about for decades. Greatness, if it exists at all, is woven of such simple threads.
It is a curious irony of human existence that we long for permanence and yet overlook the very thing that endures. Our monuments crumble, our buildings weather, our books gather dust in second-hand shops. But the memory of kindness,a moment of generosity, a word of encouragement, the feeling of being cherished,this endures not in stone but in the living tissue of memory and affection. We cannot all be remembered in history books, but we can be written indelibly in the hearts of those near us.
If, in the end, my nieces and nephews say of me not that I was clever, or witty, or well-dressed (though one does make an effort not to appear in public like a dishevelled scarecrow), but simply that I loved well,that will suffice. That, I suspect, will outlast any monument or manuscript. For cleverness fades, wit is situational, and fashion is laughably fickle. But love endures.
It endures in the way we are remembered in conversation long after we are gone. It endures in the habits of kindness we inspire in others. It endures in the quiet assurance that someone once believed in us, once cared for us, once saw us as worthy of love. If love is what remains when all else falls away, then to live a life shaped by love is not only to live well but to bequeath the finest legacy possible.
And so, if my life amounts to nothing more dazzling than this,that those who follow after can say, “He loved well”,then I shall have done enough. Indeed, I shall have done everything.
