A Generation Passing

Today, a dear friend of mine will bury his father. Having gone through the same experience several months ago myself, I am sensitive to how difficult it can be for a man to lose his father. My heart goes out to their family and I will try to support him through the coming weeks and months. Without dwelling on the personal aspects of such a loss, I will admit that in the past few years I have grown increasingly aware of a more communal loss in our society. Slowly but surely, we have been losing our depression grandparents and our World War II parents to natural attrition. Most alarming about this fact is how much of our heritage is lost with them. Their experiences, their stories, their wisdom is gone forever, unless some effort is made to preserve it. Those of us who have always had computers, television, space travel, nuclear powers, antibiotics, and the assorted other fruits of progress now take them for granted. We haven't any memory of the changes and sacrifices which our predecessors witnessed, or how such things affected them. Even with all that we have learned in recent decades, from an experiential standpoint, it can sometimes amount to so much blissful ignorance. Perhaps the "good old days" weren't even that good, but our parents and grandparents are different people for having lived through them. Now a generation is passing, a generation who knew a different world. A world were communication wasn't necessarily instantaneous. A world where the breadth of the oceans seemed enough to protect our shores from enemies. A world many of us have forgotten, just as we have forgotten those who shared it. As our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles grow older we need to spend time with them and encourage them to tell their stories. We need to give them the opportunity to pass on their legacy to us so we can better understand who we are and where we came from. Much has been written about that generation which is now slowly slipping away from us, and how they changed the world we live in. While there is yet ample opportunity, let us cherish our elders and lend them a willing ear and an open heart. They have so much to share, and those of us who have already experienced losses have learned far too late how precious their stories are.

A Generation Passing
Another of the older people I know
Has died, I just heard today
I sent him a letter a few weeks back
But now he has passed away
Like so many of his generation
Folks born when my parents were
I'm forty, they're around eighty now
And old age has no cure
It pains me to see them dwindling
To lose the stories of all they went through
Memories of the Great Depression
And the valor of World War II
Who will remember the wisdom
That generation so dearly bought?
Who will pass on the values
That generation learned, and taught?
With every person who passes on
I feel a part of my life is lost
As our history and our heritage
Slips from my grasp at a terrible cost
If your loved ones are growing old
Call them, write them, hold their hands
Listen to each of their stories
Strive to encourage and understand
Glean the wisdom they have to offer
From the long years they have known
Before it passes away with them
And make that wisdom your own
By Frank Carpenter ©