Marlee Silva’s ‘appreciation’ for the power of legacy

Warning to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the following article presents the names of deceased persons.
My Nan, Alice Maude Silva, passed away after a long battle with dementia on the 27th of July 2024, which so happened to be my Pop and her late husband’s birthday.
I’ve always heard people talk about how each person grieves differently, even if they have the same relationship with the person they’ve lost. But what I hadn’t recognised until now is how each time you grieve, it can feel so different.
Like the lessons you thought you learnt about what to expect and how to look after yourself from the last time may as well be thrown completely out the window when the dreaded news of death next comes knocking on your door. 
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I can’t act like I had the closest relationship with my Nan, or at least it wasn’t as close as I’d wished for. Families are complicated and Nan lived a six hour drive away in Dubbo most of my upbringing, so I didn’t get to spend much time with her face to face. 
But I grew up feeling like she was around me all the time, through the way I was raised. 
In the eulogy my Dad gave at Nan’s funeral, he said a line I’d heard a thousand times, ‘everything I am, I owe to Mum.’ 
Every success my Dad has seen, every lesson he has imparted on my sister and I and every fibre of his being, my Dad attributes to Nan and the way she raised him.
She taught him to be an individual and take the path less travelled, he told us “don’t be a follower”. She taught him that with hard work he could achieve his wildest dreams, he told us “there’s no such thing as can’t”. 
Nan was a trailblazer, her stories are ones I’ve written about and spoken about at every point of my career because they have been the most significant in shaping me.
She was one of very few Aboriginal women to graduate from her high school in Moree before becoming one of the very first to graduate from Sydney University – all while raising five kids with close to nothing in terms of money, in housing commission in Western Sydney.
Both my mum, as a proud daughter-in-law, and my dad told us about her stories and her achievements at any moment my sister and I were striving for something and doubting ourselves.
They reminded us whose strength and resilience was in our blood. Whose sacrifice had already carved that path less travelled, for us to walk down. 
Those stories, those facts about what Nan was able to do before she was even counted as a citizen, while facing so much racism and doubt from those around her, have been an immovable and integral part of my mindset in everything I’ve done in my life so far. 
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It truly has been the foundation of my inner strength, self belief and ultimate success.
The loss of Nan has been immense for every single one of us – her children, her 17 grandchildren, her great-grandchildren and even a couple of great-great grandchildren she lived to meet. 
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It has also brought me a whole new experience of grief – I feel I have lost my guiding star, my hero and a part of my own identity. This feeling is something I haven’t been able to speak aloud just yet, but the size of the hole she has left behind is something I almost want to say I’m proud of. 
Proud because through this grieving process I’ve found a new understanding and appreciation of the power of legacy. 
It is a reminder to me, that while in my culture I’ve had elders tell me that they often think about the actions they’ve taken in their life and how the results of them will likely be felt by their families four generations down, I am my grandmother’s living legacy and her sacrifice and determination saw impact in just one generation. 
My Dad is among very successful career-driven people in his siblings and my sister and I are among many university graduates in our cousins – all things that were achievable as a direct result of Nan. 
Ultimately, I hope this process I’m working through and how I’m trying to articulate it can be a lesson for all – a reminder on the harder days at work or in life, that strength and motivation can come from knowing someone who came before you in your lineage had to work hard to make sure you ended up here. 
You represent more than just yourself as you turn up in life and what you do in it matters. If not just to honour those who’ve come before you, but to be a source of inspiration for those who will follow. 
That’s what I’m finding joy and happiness in knowing right now. And as always, I just hope I’m doing Nan proud. 
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