A legacy I want to leave behind

Shelina Janmohamed ponders what happens to the work we do when we are no longer around to do it

Poster boards showing a photograph of Jo Cox are seen during a memorial event for the murdered Labour MP (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Last week, British legislator Jo Cox, 41, was murdered on a street in her constituency. She became a parliamentarian a little more than a year ago. Before this, she worked for the international humanitarian charity Oxfam, where she made a name for herself on matters such as immigration and the Syrian refugee crisis. A mother of two children aged five and three, she also founded the Friends of Syria parliamentary group.

I was shocked by her murder. We were at similar stages in life and our children are about the same age.

My husband gave me an emotional hug when we first met after hearing the news. “I don’t want to lose you,” he said. The weight of a potential loss hung in the air. It remained unsaid that the intensity of working and raising young children had wrapped us up in our own responsibilities, obscuring our bigger aspirations and blinding us to our individual and communal goals.

There’s a reason that we are with our beloveds – for companionship and fulfilment of life. Such a relationship also means that the other person will be admired, supported and respected.

It was amid this psychological turmoil that I read the statement from Ms Cox’s husband, issued hours after the murder. It’s elegance and poignancy continues to move me. The statement climaxed with the declaration: “She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now.” His words demonstrated clarity and certainty about her legacy.

What do people leave behind? Would those around me really know what I would have wanted above all else? Do many of us have such a clear commitment to a cause that we ooze it from every pore and in every breath?

We are always told that humans have an inclination towards leaving a legacy. But today, more than ever, we teeter between the paradox of desiring immortality (and believing we can have it) and leaving behind a legacy. Having prodigious offspring was once a key marker of legacy. But today we prefer to have fewer children. For some it’s even preferable not to have any children.

Perhaps longevity is no longer an aspiration. Perhaps we have started to believe that we can be immortal, with the lifespan rising, the talk of freezing brains, of 50 being the new 40 and 60 being the new 50. We no longer think about death and beyond; instead, we embrace and live in the moment, revelling in our belief in everlasting youth. Who wants to get old, the precursor to death? But then, we don’t want to believe that people die young.

The biggest legacy we might leave behind these days is our digital archive, our social media feeds. These can live on, unless memorialised or deleted by those who outlive us – a creepy virtual hand from beyond the grave.

For those whose legacy is clear, even death is not an end, but merely an intervention in an continuing story. The funeral of Muhammad Ali showed how a man even after death continued his work extolling love, belief, building bridges and speaking out for the oppressed as a proud black Muslim man.

I am neither Ali nor Cox, but I’d certainly love to leave behind the kind of legacy that everyone knows that I would have wanted, above all else.

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www.spirit21.co.uk