The Legacy

All the great thinkers are dead. Moses is dead, Da Vinci’s dead, Ghandi, and I’m not feeling too hot myself. Doctors? No don’t trouble me with doctors. I’ve got precious little enough time as it is without some idiot poking around me as if I’m not even there. Close the door and sit down beside me. I’ve something I have to get off my chest before I go. You see, I’m not who everyone thinks I am. I’m much more than that. I mean yes, I am Jake Donnelly, 43 Andrew’s terrace, one litre of low fat and forty silk cut every day. I am the man who brought routine to a new level. I look after my dog and chat politely to the neighbours whenever they’re passing. I water my garden in the summer and protect it from frost in the winter. I visit my sister every Thursday and wait for a visit from my daughter every Saturday. I get one brown envelope every Wednesday, from the social welfare, and one white one every fourth Friday, from my bank. I wake every day at a quarter to nine and am dressed and downstairs by nine thirty, except on weekends when I get up a half hour later, there being nothing good on the radio ‘till ten. And yet, that’s not really who I am. I’m not telling you that all of this routine was just a front because in the end, well it just became habit, you know. You can change yourself without even knowing it. And I suppose that’s why I’m here, asking for no doctors. Habit, it’s a dangerous thing. A blood-tainting virus of a thing, sapping your will without your permission until before you know it, you’re nearly gone.

Who I really am is something different. I speak five different languages, but only to myself. I eat chicken everyday, only because I don’t like fish and red meat makes my gums bleed. I’m good to my dog because he is good to me, and it seems only fair. Thursday is my sister’s choosing. She’s got so much else on it’s easier to just keep it to the same day every week. My daughter comes on Saturdays because she teaches every other day and I go down to the club on a Sunday. Low fat milk, because you should care for your body, and forty silk cut because my body started the fight so I’m going to finish it. It started it’s revolution not with an honourable all out assault like a heart attack or kidney failure, but by surreptitiously infiltrating it’s own ranks and encouraging resistance cells all of it’s own; When I was turning forty I started bracing myself and making grunts when I was getting out of my chair. I was starting to look "older" not "old" and my face was getting "character" instead of wrinkles. The virile muscles of my abdomen waned and softened into a gut. And I no longer ran for busses. Music became loud and the television became not loud enough. Something was starting to give.

After my wife died and the neighbourly visits gradually decayed, I took up hobbies. I painted the same picture eighteen times over two years, read the books of my youth only to remember that they hadn’t been too great the first time round. The needle broke on my record player eighteen months ago and I haven’t been able to get a new one yet. I really should have replaced the whole machine with a newer model, but they’re not in the same shops they used to be in. I haven’t wetted a canvas in three years. My eyesight isn’t good enough to read the print in books and now my neighbours talk only about the weather. Still I’m happy, at least, I convinced myself I’m happy. It was the other day, I was lying here in my bed, and I started to complain, about the ceiling. You see, it’s all I have to look at these days. I was lying here looking at the same cracked paint and brush strokes for nearly a full week at the time. My complaint was that I had to look at the same thing non-stop for a full week, and it wasn’t all too exciting to keep my attention. Then I realised, I have managed for the last eighteen years since Margaret died, to lie there and look at the same cracks and brush strokes that were events in my life. The grass was getting long, but it would do for another week. Young people didn’t know what they had but sure, there’s no telling them. My hair became grey and thin, but who was I trying to impress anyway, I had my dog, my radio, my routine.

I woke suddenly to the sound of nurses laughing in the corridor, not an unpleasant sound at any time. But when I realised what the noise was, I settled and I started to smile. Almost as quick, the smile collapsed into a shameful frown with clarity. I was happy because I was comfortable. I mean the pain was still there, but I was on my own territory, albeit newly acquired. The staff nurse would be in soon to offer me tea and toast and I would accept the offer, we’d make chit chat and all would be... nice. It wasn’t until then that I realised my fate, I had succumbed to pastel-coloured, easy-listening, smooth-flavoured mediocrity, and it tasted like cold tea. Drafting out cliché after cliché, I realised I could have been somebody, I could have made a difference. But I didn’t, not really. Aside from any effect on my offspring, my legacy is limited to a neatly cut lawn, a lonely dog, and a collection of old shoes and picture postcards that I should have thrown away a long time ago. When I die in a few days, some people will remember me, their thoughts revolving somewhere around "aw that’s a shame. How old was he?"

I think of the famous, and then the infamous. No matter if they were good or bad, they are all remembered by the world without any effort. That’s including an insignificant old man who is soon to be joining them, yet who himself will pass through the gates of heaven unnoticed. I’ll be one of those that Peter will overlook. He’ll be too busy giving directions to an underling to check my pass, and I’ll just saunter through, unaware of where it is exactly that I should be going. I’ll end up homeless in heaven asking Karl Marx for spare change. Even Hitler made a grand entrance to the afterlife. He walked through the gates and everyone stopped what they were doing to see who the new kid was, the piano player nervously not knowing whether he should continue playing or hide behind his music box for cover in case there was trouble. I’ll be caught underfoot by old women who share an exaggerated sense of their own importance. The ten-o’clock-mass-every-morning types, nattering away making sure they get seen. And when they pass, I’ll stand up, dust myself off and wander aimlessly for eternity, or until I’ve got myself into some sort of routine -which ever comes first.

If this is to be the future I have condemned myself to, then let my present be a little more noticeable. So if you’ve brought the things I asked you to then I’ll get started making a name for myself.

You know, people say you shouldn’t complain. I’ve had a good life and I know it. When I think of how things could have been, I could have been gone long ago with no one to notice me. I could have had a miserable life, rotten parents, no lovers, an awkward foot size so I couldn’t get shoes that fit well. But no, I have been blessed. My parents were wonderful to me. My wife, oh Margaret, I still miss her you know. Everything, I’ve nothing really to complain about. But in the greater scheme of things, what was the point? If it wasn’t me it would have been someone else. If it wasn’t then we would have created it. I am not renowned for anything. In time, I will not be remembered. And now when I'm nearly wasted away, I still feel this fire burning in me, spurring me on to make a difference. Maybe it’s the flame that I must extinguish before I can die. Burn out or fade away? It’s like I’m getting a second chance. I’ve already faded but I feel I can go out with a bang.

Let’s get started shall we? I Jake Donnelly, being of sound mind and body, well of sound mind at least, do make this statement under full understanding of it’s consequences and implications. You’re probably wondering why I should care. I’ll be gone, I won’t even know what people will think about me. It’s not even that I want to be remembered, but I want to carry on after I'm dead. Carry on existing. I make this statement under no duress or pressure of any kind other than the desire, no make that the need to clear my conscience. That’s better isn’t it?

I am worried though about what effect this will have on my daughter. She doesn’t know any of this. She doesn’t even know I’m dying. Nothing I can do I suppose, I am committed to this now. We’ll carry on, Stop everything. Put down whatever you’re doing and listen. You hearing this message means that I am dead. Very few of you know who I am, or I suppose, who I was. However, due to a few investments I made in my youth, I have been able to buy this air time on national radio and television news. Perhaps even someone might send a copy of this message to the papers, I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s only the news on television and radio that my lawyer has arranged. Normally I do not believe that money should buy you anything you don’t deserve, but this once I’ll make an exception because I have something to tell you and if only one person listens then it will be worth it.

Do you think I should just come right out with it or go on a bit more, get my money’s worth? I only have one simple message: I did not believe in god until I had a vision in my youth. I was told to live life one way. To stray from that way was to go against God. I have striven all my life to follow the path that was laid out for me and you all must do the same. My vision was of a ghostly figure surrounded by a bright white light. The figure spoke to me in a verberating voice and said only one word. Now that I am dead, I can tell the rest of the human race God’s meaning of life, the purpose behind it all. What you must do. I’ll thank you for your time and attention and tell you the message. It was simply "Dance".

It’s all a lie you know, there is no divine plan, but it’s the only way to get people to listen. You see the problem with attention is that it is rarely spent on anything worth noticing. Car crashes, accidents, violence, the more gruesome the scene, the more attention it gets. The more people die, the more airtime it receives. That is of course only if they’re citizens of the great western white, anyone else and they risk having to fight it out with farming debates and inflation rates for attention headlines and soundbites. Money has allowed me to broadcast that message at peak times, before the headlines and soundbites. I hope I’m clear to you, my legacy is not just some eccentric whim just to manipulate people. No, it’s much more important than that. I spent my whole life and I was too busy to notice it. I never got any of the things done that I wanted to. I was too busy just living. Now maybe in a few years someone will come through the gates of heaven and say "You’re that crazy old man with that message. I heard it on the radio and I changed because of you. I started dancing." I’ll get to laugh at them and tell them they wasted their time. Dance if you want to dance, but only if you want.

^

Biography

I am a 23 year old boy who finished college May '99. I started working in a bookshop that summer which is really only when I started reading. Shortly after reading a few good books, I started writing for pleasure and (with very little direction) for practice. The Legacy is the first story I've written, though others continue to follow.