Legacy

Benke, in my particular bloodline, Ryan was it. I've never been big on legacy, or "the Benke name" going on.

But it hits different now.

It's hard to think about the Benke name not surviving. At least my line of it. But that's not really the part that guts me. It's everything that was supposed to come with it.

Until I lost my son, my only child, I didn't realize how desperately I wanted to be a grandfather. I didn't realize every thought of the future already included people who didn't exist yet.

Watching Ryan grow into his next chapter, and the one after that, into his 50s... it was just a given. It was ingrained somewhere in the map of my mind, the way the sun coming up is ingrained.

We used to talk about retiring to the mountains, twelve or fifteen years out. A small three bedroom house. Maybe an A-frame, so Ryan's family could enjoy the view with us. Three bedrooms so he could spend the holidays with us, comfortably. That was just what it would be.

We talked about getting a travel trailer too. So we could come see Ryan and the grandkids whenever we wanted, without imposing.

Every single version of the future was interwoven in Ryan's lifeline. From this Thanksgiving to our grandchildren's college graduation.

I can't wrap my mind around doing something "in Ryan's memory" instead of with Ryan.

I feel robbed. By God, by Fate, by the Universe, or whatever the hell is actually out there running this.

I'm sad that the future I imagined is still burned into my brain, even though I know it doesn't exist anymore. It plays anyway. Uninvited. A film reel with nowhere left to project.

I'm angry. Furious that this happened to Ryan. To Pam. To Robin. To me. Angry that the thing I cherished more than my own life was taken with no warning, no permission, no apology, no negotiation.

Legacy, in terms of my blood, ends with him.

But legacy was never really about the name. It was about my hopes. My dreams. The grandkids who don't exist now and never will.

The A-frame with empty bedrooms that will never hold his family for the holidays.

The camper we'll never hitch up to go see him.

That's what's gone. Not a surname. A whole future I had already lived inside of, in my head, for twenty-two years.

And now I'm standing in the wreckage of a life that hasn't even happened yet... grieving people I never got to meet.