I don’t watch much TV these days (other than American Idol and Ice Road Truckers in season), but once upon a time I was a TV devotee. Of all the shows I ever watched, I don’t think one spoke to me or reflected my life more than thirtysomething, the award-winning drama about a bunch of Philly baby boomers that aired from 1987 to 1991. Some of my friends from the era compared me to Hope Murdoch Steadman, played by Mel Harris (minus the baby), I think because while the show was on, I had her hair (including the bangs); I’d lost a lot of weight; and the home my then-husband and I shared was the site of a lot of parties, dinners, and get-togethers, just like the Steadmans.
But Hope wasn’t the focus of my favorite thirtysomething scene of all time. It’s in “Pilgrims,” the episode that first aired November 21, 1989. She and Nancy Weston, who’s undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer, are talking on a playground and a bunch of kids dressed as Pilgrims run by, singing that lovely old hymn, “We Gather Together.”
Nancy talks about what will happen to her children if she dies. She says something along the lines of, “Ethan’s eight. He’ll be sad for a while, but my work is done there. But Brittany’s only three. She won’t remember me.”
If that doesn’t rip out your heart, I don’t know what would.
I thought about this scene this morning at Mass as we sang “We Gather Together.” And I thought about how fleeting our legacy is. Even names from the past that live on for us… Shakespeare, Marco Polo, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great… mean nothing to billions of people alive today. It’s certain that we’ll die… and that beyond a few generations, no one will remember us. But as we gather together today and in the future, those certainties should compell us even more to concern ourselves with the now, with doing what we can today to serve God and those around us. If we do that, we can smile whenever our work here on earth is done.
