Guest Post 2: Upon The Death of A Legend

As I make my way back to New York, I still find myself in a pit of confusion. Mr. Russert....gone? It is unfathomable. Yet, as I sit in a bus filled to the brim with strangers I may never see again, I have stumbled onto my "aha!" moment.A few months ago, my mother and I were wrapped up in a telephone call trying to catch up on each other's lives. I was coming to the end of my visiting semester at NYU and was eager to find out if I would be accepted into the community as a permanent member. Unfortunately, my application was stamped with a flat-out "denied" and it looks like I will be dragging my feet back to my former institution. Nonetheless, my mother and I had of course gone from talking about little things into a philosophical discussion only sparked from those little things (celebrity gossip can take you far if examined the right way). I cannot recall the details of the little things we were discussing but they led my mother to say, " You have to create your own narrative." At the time, I did not take the words for what they were worth because quite frankly, she's my mother. I'm just getting over my teenage years and therefore am just starting to kick my adolescent ways to the curb. However, despite my immaturity at the time, those words found a place in the back of my head and settled in.Now, a few months later, I am facing the loss of the man who understood the power of creating his own narrative. The past few days I have heard many memories from close friends of Mr. Russert giving his time to others despite his sleepless schedule. Whether it was sitting almost every day with a friend with cancer or preparing tirelessly to give America the best interviews on television, Mr. Russert always took the time to make dreams come true. I'm not talking about the big, cliche-like dreams like "I want to be famous" or "I wish I could fly." Instead, I'm talking about the unconscious wishes that we do not realize are dreams until someone with that special connection comes into our lives. Mr. Russert understood this. He understood the truth that our smallest wishes are often our biggest dreams.
As reality continues its attempts on settling in, the loss of his presence breathes life into those words my mother said about creating your own narrative. One's narrative is the defining factor for one's remembrance. If his narrative was making dreams come true, what will mine be? Upon the death of a legend, my narrative can only be to help the legacy of his narrative live on.

- Jonna (www.college-pros.com)