The Last Lecture

August 12, 2011
It's ironic that I deliberately ignored my children today to read a book. And not just any book. A book about living while dying. A book about leaving a legacy for your children because you know you aren't going to be around to love them, teach them, guide them, or for them to even remember who you are. A book about achieving your childhood dreams, winning the "parent lottery," and overcoming all those "brick walls" in your life.

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.

If you haven't read it, go get it. It only took me a couple of hours to read and that was in between taking the kids outside in the hopes of relieving boredom, screaming, and whining, and making lunch at the peak of starvation (How is that possible when all they did was eat from the moment they woke up?). It's an amazing legacy of a man dying of pancreatic cancer who gives his last lecture to students, faculty, friends, and his children. A tradition for professors to give a "last lecture" at Carnegie Mellon University in which anything goes, Randy Pausch beautifully weaves a lifetime of stories, experiences, trials, and lessons learned into a moving legacy of what life is and should be about. By the end of the book, I of course was crying at the thought of leaving my own family and wondering what I would tell them if I knew I was dying. I wondered if people truly live their lives like Randy. If they really have childhood dreams and if they really achieve them. If they could pinpoint those impressionable moments and people in their lives that changed them forever, shaped who they were. I'm not sure I could even list my own childhood dreams but I know I want to be the kind of mom that allows her kids to dream big. I want to be the kind of mom that shows tough love, that teaches her kids how to be kind, overcome obstacles, and to be a good human being. A kind of mom who leaves a legacy of love, respect, determination, hard work, sacrifice, and creativity.

I've got a long ways to go. A long ways. But if reading this book brings me one step closer, then hopefully ignoring my kids and housekeeping for a couple of hours was worth it. Although in my defense, I did make it up to Pearl and Cole by taking them to the pool that afternoon.