Our Legacy
/This blog post is quite personal and doesn’t have much to do with tech. So if that’s not what you are here for, wait for the next blog post. This is personal to me though, so if you want to read about me, everything with flaws and all, then follow along.
Why am I writing this here on my blog?
I’ve been watching (I know, late) Hamilton the musical, and the ending “who lives, who dies, who tells your story” really startled me. In the story, the widow lives another 50 years after him and did all sort of things to tell his legacy. It really got me thinking - what about my wife, who left us so young, so soon, who will tell the story of this quiet girl that was never in the public spotlight, but fun, loving, always happy and full of kindness. Who else, but me? The person that loved and knew her the most.
Where do I even write this? Hamilton, being a founding father of America - has scores of historians looking up all the letters, correspondences and essays that he wrote during his time. There’s nothing like that for Lina Abidin, she didn’t write many things, and there will be no historians to talk about her one day, but we do live in the Internet age so I will write about her, on the platform that will be archived for the world to remember, on my public blog.
What is our legacy?
John as a young man would be quite similar to Hamilton - young, hungry and scrappy. He believed he is pretty smart and can do anything he put his mind to. As he grew in his career - he dreamed of starting his own company and start up.
Lina as a young lady did not have grand aspirations (or grand delusions?) as John, but she always saw herself as someone that will use her financial skills and sharp wits to help her husband. So in 2018, when we finally started my own company Flow Studio - Lina was delighted. She didn’t need us to be rich beyond our wildest dreams - she just wanted a comfortable living with me and our kids.
What is Lina’s skill? She is extremely talented at finding and understanding numbers, and how to calculate best outcomes. Tax and accounting comes naturally to her, financial modelling is her forte, and pretty much every computer game we played together she has a fully working Excel spreadsheet powering the calculations and the shortest paths to the best rewards in the game. She has more excel files than games in her Steam library.
Hey kids, it’s actually all about you two
As I looked back in the final period of our lives together, her concerns were increasingly focused on our children. She wanted them to eat the yummy food that she could cook. She wanted to knit more articles of clothing and make crochet toys for them. She wanted to sort out her will so that they will be protected for the kids so even John can’t screw it up.
Ultimately, I had thought our legacy would be some sort of wealth that we’ve built together. But when it all comes down to the end, it was our two lovely kids that’s the only thing on her mind.
We thought perhaps she can pre-record some things to say to them when they come of age, and we tried, we really tried - but Lina could not stop crying when we try to record these, she says she wanted to see their wedding, their partners and their children and how unfair it all seems that she would not be there to see them graduate, or hit any of these life milestones.
I didn’t have anything to say to her, I can only hug her and say “hey, if anything feels too hard, let me take care of it, OK?”.
“OK, she said”.
With that she was able to stop worrying at the end and enter into rest.
Future
What’s next for us, for the kids, for our company, for our livelihood? I have no idea. But I will do my absolute best to raise her legacy. I was very much reminded of this this week, and I wanted to commit my promises to her, to words.
May the Internet and our kids be my witness.
