AFTER WE´´´VE GONE Billie Gold

Over lockdown I would wager that if you haven't lost someone, you know somebody that has.

For me, my loss came quite unexpectedly, as I just assumed that she would exist forever. My nan died three weeks into lockdown, and that was at a time when it was absolutely a no go to travel to my family to support them, it was simply a case of sitting alone with my thoughts, and Facetime my mum for a couple of hours while the funeral took place.

Losing my nan was a strange one because to put it simply, we weren't very close. Her and I were very much like chalk and cheese, she always wanted me to be the perfect little girl and do little girl things. My most recent memory of her is what got me thinking. She had vehemently expressed that my desire not to have children was unacceptable. This got me thinking in a time of great panic and worry about legacies. I’m not going to be leaving a line of offspring behind me when I shuffle off my mortal coil. No one will say that they have my eyes, and no one will call me mother. I suppose since I’m a woman the pressure to have children by the time I’m 35 or I’m simply not fulfilling my use is a rhetoric which has plagued the childless for as long as the expectation has existed. But my answer to my nan was just this, “I have more to leave behind than what my womb can do”. While I won’t raise a tiny human to carry on my name after I’m gone, I am finding it interesting to look at ways in which I can leave behind a piece of me after I’ve died.

Legacies make us, even if it's just a line of text, an important photograph, or an esteemable act. I find it interesting that a lot of people wait to start leaving something to other people until they are older. As a woman I think maybe this is because the timeline has been pre set: you live your fun, carefree life, you have children, they grow up and you've done your part. But for me and many others this is simply not so, and what if you shun that expectation?

“After we die we are simply stories, so after my nan died I started to think about what stories I wanted to be told about me”

Each one of us has turned to people and resources that inspire us to guide us through our lives and become little pieces of who we are. After we die we are simply stories, so after my nan died I started to think about what stories I wanted to be told about me, and thus sparked a new way of thinking. I figure that thinking about how you want to be remembered after you've gone, can change who you are right now. In my opinion, it's not the people we can make with our bodies that make us. It's the journeys we help others to take, in whatever way, after we’ve gone.

This got me thinking in a time of great panic and worry about legacies. I’m not going to be leaving a line of offspring behind me when I shuffle off my mortal coil. No one will say that they have my eyes, and no one will call me mother. I suppose since I’m a woman the pressure to have children by the time I’m 35 or I’m simply not fulfilling my use is a rhetoric which has plagued the childless for as long as the expectation has existed. But my answer to my nan was just this, “I have more to leave behind than what my womb can do”.