You Thought You Had Forever: A Lesson In Legacy
I can’t tell you how many times I have tried to write this particular piece?? Many!! This is probably the thought I spend the most time ruminating about, and especially of late. I have finally, within the last two years, come to realize that my legacy, or lack thereof, is most important to me, and I very much wish this realization had come many decades ago.
A good friend of mine has said to me on more than one occasion (to be read in a heavy Southern accent) “Rocchio, do you know what your problem is...you thought you had forever.” He had a long list of what was wrong with me, but this one was at the top.
For a long time, I didn’t really know what he meant, but lately, his meaning has become all too clear.
I always wanted to be married and always wanted kids, four was my plan. I am confident it is no coincidence that we had four kids in our family growing up, long since referred to as the original four, sort of like the Beatles. When my father remarried, he had our Ringo, and yes in many ways she also replaced our original drummer, but perhaps more on that later. I started asking my eldest sister’s friends, she hates it when I say eldest, to marry me when I was four. They were all eight, and so I guess I had a thing for “older” women. Now that I think about it, I dated a senior when I was a freshman in high school, and I “dated” a senior when I was a freshman in college, so I guess it was a trend, but the trend stopped there. Over the years some of her friends said they’d wait for me, but none of them did.
After my Accenture days I did two years coaching and teaching at Tilton School in New Hampshire and between my first and second year I took a young man who played for me on a little recruiting “jaunt.” I have never used that word, but it seems more than appropriate here. We left New Hampshire and headed West and South. I took him to Gettysburg first, if memory serves, where the summer lacrosse recruiting camps really began, and then to Delaware where the largest and most competitive of the camps took place. I am sure there were other stops along the way, but I cannot remember exactly where.
There are two things that stick out for me about this trip, perhaps three. The first is that we almost won the so-called “Battle of the Hotbeds” that summer, with a band of Northern New England kids that were not expected to be able to compete at that level. The second is that this young man, who had only been playing the game for a few years and had not had any recruiting interest at this point in his journey, wound up with a scholarship to his first choice, Ohio State University. Yes, I know they prefer, demand, that “THE” be put on the front of Ohio State which is why I always make a point not to do so since I have never liked that particular university, his scholarship offer, and a very successful four-year career there, notwithstanding.
The third thing, so I guess there were three, and the most pertinent to this topic, is that somewhere along the way, I am pretty sure it was as we traveled along Interstate 84 on the way to Gettysburg, maybe, this young man, Class President, Student Body President, Class Valedictorian, and eventual Two Time High School All-American, asked me a question that caught me a bit off-guard, “hey Rock, how is it that you have never been married?” I think I was thirty-nine at the time, plus or minus, and for me this question was a pretty good slap, but knowing who it was coming from and that it was obviously coming from a good place, I answered as best I could.
At the time, I had had three long-term relationships that did not work out. One ended in engagement, and then disengagement, one ended after six years of living together and putting her through law school, or more accurately, supporting her while the army put her through law school. I know during each of these relationships I believed I was with the person I would marry. I know I got hurt pretty severely each time when they ended. I only ended one of the three, but even then, I only broke off the engagement because the “writing” was very much “on the wall.” What else do you do when you ask someone “What if I decide I want to teach and coach,” and the answer that comes back is “I love you, but I’d leave you.” Ok, let’s just skip the middle part and get disengaged. I still remember exactly where I was standing when the disengaging happened, just inside the door to the international terminal in Detroit as I was about to head back to Zurich, alone.
Anyway, that was my answer to him, and up to that point it all made sense, but the reality is that I was still single and about to be forty, with no home, family of my own, or clear plan in sight. To make matters worse, from a legacy standpoint anyway, I then left the comfort and security of the Tilton gig to head off to Denison University to coach football and lacrosse. I was excited to have the opportunity to coach at the college level, and my father was thrilled at the prospect, but it meant yet another move and another gig where I was starting from scratch. Coaching at the college level was something my father had always dreamed of doing himself. I just recently found a note he sent me the year I was at Denison where he says, “Remember you are following your bliss.” This was very much his way of putting things, but I also think he was really saying I was following “our” bliss, not just mine. A couple of years later, after taking a couple of years to be with my elderly grandmother, my father, and others were very supportive of me shuffling off to California to take over my own college program. That, as they say, was really the beginning of the end, I just didn’t really know it at the time.
When I packed up everything I could fit in my Volvo and headed West I was extremely excited. When I got there, I immediately jumped into building a program and laying the groundwork towards national ranking and unprecedented program success, but I lost myself in the process. I know now, it was greatly to do with I had essentially lost my family, as well as most of my longtime friends. Lost is a bit of an overstatement, and I have to say that my sisters and many of those same friends have been very much in my corner of late, but getting lost in two different college programs out West, and not focusing on anything else for the most part, not taking care of myself, not keeping up with those friends and my family in the way I should have, completely destroyed who I was inside and led to some really bad decisions along the way. Before I knew it, I woke up sixty years old and seventeen years removed from my East Coast roots, with no family of my own, friendships that needed repair, and thankfully three sisters standing with me as I try to figure out what to do from here.
I truly never understood what my buddy Dean meant all those years ago until very recently, and now that I do, I am painfully aware of the fact that there is nothing I can do about it at this point. There is a saying, I am not sure by whom, “there’s no such thing as new old friends.” I believe that to be true, and thankfully have realized that in time to save some of those longtime relationships, but it is also true that you can’t make a legacy where there isn’t one. It is not that I don’t believe I did some good things along the way or made a difference in some lives along the way, but when it comes to family, and home, kids and grandkids, old friends and neighbors, breaking bread, and making memories, lasting, meaningful memories that are shared with those you love, it is too late to create these things. I can’t go back and have the kind of life I always wanted or expected in this regard. I can’t go back and spend more time with my dad before Alzheimer’s made it so there was only a flicker of recognition. I can’t go back and see my sister, our Ringo, in her high school and college shows. I can’t go back and watch my nieces and nephews grow up through their teen years and into early adulthood. I can’t go back and share my life with all of them as I was building my programs.
I have done a great deal in my life. I have traveled all over the world. I have met some great people along the way, stayed in and lived in some of the world’s most exceptional cities. I have worked on some of the world’s most-known engineering projects, and I have consulted with dozens of Fortune 500 companies over the years. I have done The Supper Club thing in New York City for New Year’s Eve and skied some of the Wests most epic mountains as well as Zermatt and Wengen in Switzerland. I have heli skied in Whistler and I’ve flown a glider. I did the hot air balloon thing in Steamboat Springs and I’ve sailed all over Narragansett Bay and off the shores of Toronto. I’ve hung with friends on the pristine beaches of Grand Cayman and drove the loop around “The Big Island” in Hawaii to make it fifty states in fifty years. The list goes on, and I am very grateful and fortunate to have done all of these things, but the reality is that none of this matters. I know this now.
Writing the previous paragraph, and especially those last two sentences, makes me think of the ending of the movie Scrooged when Bill Murry’s character says, “I get it now.”
The moral of the story, as I am always want to have when writing these pieces, is that “legacy,” not of things done or accomplished, not of games or awards won, but of home, and family, and people to truly care for that hopefully also care for you, cannot be replaced or created once that time has passed, and if you are like me you may not see it coming, but it is very much like a Mack Truck hitting you in the face and then lying there wondering what the hell hit you?
I realize that there are people that do not want kids, and simply want to travel and enjoy the world, and in many cases have a partner in crime that feels the same way, but for those, like me, for whom family, and home, and all of that is important, please don’t wait, at least not too long. You need time to figure out what you want, and who you are, although once upon a long time ago I think I knew, but then that got very lost along the way. Just know that you can’t replace the years, and you can’t create new old memories with someone, or someones, special. There is no going back and thus there is no creating a legacy after the fact. I truly did think I had forever… until I didn’t.
As with much of what I have written recently, I am hopeful that some of those that read this story will find it helpful, and/or share it with the twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings, or even forty-somethings, that are showing no signs of slowing down or refocusing on home and family so that they may come to the realization I have before it is too late. One can hope, right?
