One hundred years ago today, the RMS Titanic set off from Southampton, England. It was to be the cruising experience of a 
lifetime on the most luxurious vessel of it’s time. For most on that ship, it was the final experience of their lifetime.
One hundred years after it’s first and final voyage, we are still fascinated by it’s dramatic demise and mysterious grave.
Last week James Cameron’s epic Titanic was re-released in 3D. If you enter a book store, books on the Titanic are featured in almost every reading age and genre of the store. Television specials will be on for at least a week. T-shirts are in stores with pictures and references to the ship. For those who are really intrigued, you can even book a trip on a luxury cruise ship to commemorate the titanic voyage, by sailing the same route as the Titanic, with a stop above it’s watery grave for a memorial service.
Truly, the Titanic has been, and will continue to be, a titanic money maker for those marketing it’s memory.
There are times in my life, when I have had a decision to make, that is a difficult one, and I do not know which way to go. Or times when I am in the midst of a stressful struggle in some part of my life, and I feel overwhelmed with my circumstances. During these times, I try to ask myself, “in one hundred years, will this situation, this decision, matter?”
I find it sad to think that those who perished on that voyage, will be mostly remembered for their deaths, rather than for their lives. For them, their decision to take a cruise on the Titanic, was a decision that matters still, one hundred years later. For those who were directly connected to the passengers or the crew of the Titanic, the people on that ship lived a life before their death.
In the deaths of those over fifteen hundred men, women and children, died people who were more intimately known for how they lived. There were mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, sons and daughters. There were breadwinners and homemakers, debutantes and male bachelors, there were dock workers and billionaires.
These people were people, just like us, who awoke each day desiring a cup of coffee or tea, who had worries in their hearts and to do lists in their heads. And they, like we will, died with the name of a loved one on their lips.
Those who were lost in the cold waters of the Atlantic, were not just passengers of a ship, they were people who left holes in the lives of those who felt the very real loss of that tragedy. But, it is their lives, not their loss that left the legacy that matters one hundred years later.
itsawonderfilledlife 