Legacy Matters

Message of Love in Blood

Every now and again, if we look carefully, we can catch a glimpse of what it must be like to know that you will die in the next few moments.  But such glimpses are ephemeral, easily lost.

The people on the upper floors in the World Trade Center on September 11 who knew they were trapped called home.  They had to tell their families that they loved them.  Voice mail messages.  What's more ephemeral?

Knowing how important these voice mail messages were, Verizon turned off the system's "janitor" feature that deletes messages automatically after seven to 30 days to save them.  Verizon offered taped recordings free of charge to more than 5 million voice mail subscribers in 31 states who received love-full messages from their friends and family.

From the LA train crash, comes another ephemeral message  of love - in blood.

He thought he was going to die.

He was having trouble breathing. As he lay wedged under a train seat and metal debris, with whatever energy he could summon and a heartbreaking economy of words, he scrawled a farewell in blood on the seat. "I {heart} my kids. I {heart} Leslie," he printed. The blood ink seemed to be running out as he got to the second sentence.

The man who was extracted with the "jaws of life" by three firefighters and has returned home.  He prefers not to talk to the
media about his private message of love that became a public tribute.  We can thank Al Seib from the LA Times who captured this photograph.

        When death is only moments away, people think and feel love and they must say it.  Why not think about those love now, write it down in a letter, put it with your will.  The evidence of who and what you loved is what you want to send into the future.  It is your legacy and your legacy matters.