Legacy

A family portrait from 2019. My dad taught me how to laugh. My mom taught me how to keep going. My sister taught me how to be responsible. But most of all, they taught me what it meant to love. I am who I am today because of their influence and am all the more better because of it. Cutline by Emily Velasco.

Kristine Nagayama

A family portrait from 2019. My dad taught me how to laugh. My mom taught me how to keep going. My sister taught me how to be responsible. But most of all, they taught me what it meant to love. I am who I am today because of their influence and am all the more better because of it. Cutline by Emily Velasco.

Emily Velasco, Blog
February 28, 2023

People like to romanticize scars, both physical and mental, but no one could have prepared me for how much they hurt. I will always carry that in my heart, invisible scars on my soul. 

I’ve read so many books about tragedy and legacies that they felt like foreign concepts to me, things only featured in books and glamorous Hollywood movies. It took the greatest tragedy of my life to make me realize how important and absolutely crushing the two are. 

To be honest, the idea of legacies never really bothered me until the day my dad died. 

My dad, who was always a person who could always smile, laugh, and joke, left this earth far too soon. It wasn’t easy to stomach the fact that his smiles could have hidden so much pain.

My dad poses for a photo, the ramen restaurant’s neon yellow sign reflected in his glasses. I used to rope him into posing for my photography assignments and he would give me the most ridiculous poses to make me laugh and would always wear his 49ers shirts, even when they had terrible seasons, which happened more often than he wanted to admit. This is my most creative portrait of him. (Emily Velasco)

My dad’s death left us with so many questions and so few answers. Everything became a whirlwind of comparing my own memories of my dad to the person others thought he was. 

Later came questions about what would come next: who am I, and who can I be because of the legacies I now carry?

The day my dad died, I lost my already fragile relationship with my dad’s side of the family. Everyone was so ready to play the blame game that it didn’t matter what had actually happened. No one cared about anything other than assigning blame and pointing fingers. 

But my God is stronger. My faith is stronger than their pride. He got me through pain and is still guiding me through it. 

But it doesn’t mean I still don’t feel the loss of my dad deeply. Sometimes I have days where I break down or days when I feel like screaming. Sometimes I don’t feel anything at all. Those days scare me the most. 

I’ve learned a lot these past few months. One of these lessons was when I had to come to terms with the fact that I don’t need to achieve perfection to be enough. I can fall just as long as I get up again. 

I wish I learned this lesson when I was younger.

Legacies are more than what is left behind. They are living, breathing things passed down from generation to generation. 

A family portrait from 2019. My dad taught me how to laugh. My mom taught me how to keep going. My sister taught me how to be responsible. But most of all, they taught me what it meant to love. I am who I am today because of their influence and I am all the better because of it.
Cutline by Emily Velasco. (Kristine Nagayama)

I am the legacy of my dad, my mom, my sister, my grandparents, my aunty and uncle. Who they are has influenced me, and I am proud of who I am.

But I am stronger now. I know who I am: a daughter, a sister, a friend. I don’t need to be perfect to be enough, and I certainly don’t need validation from academics or people who aren’t good for me. I am loved and wanted. I am enough.