Empathy & Legacy
Experience enlightens over years.
Our pain reveals our vulnerability.
Our empathy grows as others shed tears;
All members of the human family.
Recognition of our mortality
brings empathy for those we’ll leave behind.
We struggle to ensure our legacy,
remembered as accomplished, wise, and kind.
Advice may be ignored by those we love
who choose to make their own mistakes, their way.
Confronting consequences later proves
the wisdom of kind warnings made today.
It’s futile overthinking legacy.
We live our values; they tell our story!
Backstory
Approaching Age 77: Reflections on the Meaning of Life
A comment on a recent post, “Approaching Age 77: Reflections on the Meaning of Life” caused me to dig a little deeper. Laura Bruno Lily commented …”I am especially attuned to your poems, ‘Empathy’ and ‘Legacy’ in this moment.”As I wrote a response, my comment got longer and longer until it grew into this post. Thank you, Laura!
Over the last few years I have found myself becoming increasingly empathetic. At the same time, I realized that I have unwittingly been insensitive to others in the past. I guess that is the uncomfortable aspect of getting wiser as you age.
I remember, at the beginning of the Independent Living Movement, watching the news and seeing people demonstrating in Washington, DC for their civil rights. As a young working mother struggling in the workplace, I wondered why in the world they were so eager to work!
About a decade later, I moved to DC and became a 24/7 live-in caregiver for Drew Batavia, a young quadriplegic attorney who was active in the Independent Living Movement. I was there beside him every step of the way, traveling with him to conferences and speaking engagements domestically and internationally, documenting inaccessabe street crossings and businesses all over DC, proofreading articles and books.
Most of those years I was a fulltime student, and later, a fulltime teacher. After I became a teacher, I always continued to care for Drew on nights and weekends to give us a private life.
Seven years after meeting, we married, moved to Miami Beach, and adopted a Russian brother and sister. Drew and I shared eighteen years together before Drew died at the age of forty-two.
Concern with legacy is a recognition of our mortality, but recognition of mortality also results in increasing empathy for those we may leave behind.We wish to shield them from making some of the same mistakes we have made, knowing full well that we must all make our own mistakes and learn from them. Still, it’s always worth a try!
I remember my grandfather, when I was in high school. He took me to practice driving in a parking lot in his huge, ten-year-old, metallic baby blue Cadillac. Wanting to protect me from making mistakes, he shared some of his regrets. I cherish those precious times spent with Grandpa, but ultimately, I still had to make my own mistakes.
If you can benefit from the mistakes of others, especially when you are young, I think you are pretty smart! I also believe you are truly exceptional!
Copyright© 2026 by Cheryl Batavia
Please share in the comments. What values are most important to you right now ?
Gulf Coast Poet 