Today is Ash Wednesday, a day when people of the Christian faith mark the beginning of Lent, the time of preparation for the Good News of Easter. Christians around the globe receive ashes on their foreheads, with the whispered words, "From dust you came; from dust you will return."

And today, I need this message more than usual.

My beloved, brilliant, beautiful, and benevolent father-in-law died suddenly on Monday morning. We will have literal ashes in our possession by week's end. Ashes of a man who rarely had a harsh word, raised voice, or absent smile. A man who I am grateful every day for being the model of what manhood is to my husband, and thus now to my son and daughter.

I came to grips some time ago that my death would not be reported on the national news. I don’t mean in the died-in-some-grisly-way-that-makes-everyone-watching-throw-up-a-little way, but rather in the steely-eyed-news-anchor-saying, “Jennie-Spohr-died-today” way, as if people would know who I am.

You may wonder what kind of a cocky, all-that-and-a-side-of-hash browns attitude made me ever think I’d be eulogized to national fanfare, but in my idealistic teen-twenty-something years, where all the world’s an oyster to be saved from a red tide, I thought/believed/hoped/wanted to do something “important” in my life. Like cure AIDS hand-in-hand with Bono. End genocide. Stop the illegal sex trade. Me and a cape and a rousing speech. Sure, some of the motivation was to be known (what is it with us humans and the drive for fame?), but really, I wanted to be on the news when I died because I had done something good in the world. Something significant. In a big way.

Round about twenty-six, I realized this was not going to happen. I didn’t have the connections, didn’t have the skill set, and didn’t have quite the right cape, to dramatically create what I considered “real” change. That if I wasn’t going to do something that helped a lot of people, then what was the point? Once I fully digested that knowledge, I felt I’d failed my purpose for existence. Moreover, even if I say, solved global warming with Bubbalicious, a paperclip, metal filings and gumption, 200 years from now, I still would not be anywhere close to timeless. In hindsight, I know this sounds like a ton of hubris. Well meaning, but cocky as hell none-the-less.

Round about twenty-six, I realized this was not going to happen. I didn’t have the connections, didn’t have the skill set, and didn’t have quite the right cape, to dramatically create what I considered “real” change. That if I wasn’t going to do something that helped a lot of people, then what was the point? Once I fully digested that knowledge, I felt I’d failed my purpose for existence. Moreover, even if I say, solved global warming with Bubbalicious, a paperclip, metal filings and gumption, 200 years from now, I still would not be anywhere close to timeless. In hindsight, I know this sounds like a ton of hubris. Well meaning, but cocky as hell none-the-less.

All this navel-gazey, existential stream of consciousness is Richard III’s fault. Or rather, those who buried him. If you hadn’t heard, it was confirmed this week that the last Plantagenet king of England’s remains were found buried under a car-park in the middle of London.  Here he is, flipping King of flipping England during one of the most tumultuous times of English history (again, see the remarkable Alison Weir on the War of the Roses) and give us a couple hundred years and we’ve paved his not so paradise and put up a parking lot. This would be akin to Americans finding President Lincoln under a Beltway on-ramp. And I don’t say this to disparage the Brits, rather to point out how even the mightiest of mighty fall to the wayside. As the book of Ecclesiastes laments, “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.’ No one remembers the former generations. And even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.”

The writer of Ecclesiastes, (“Qoheleth,” for those studying at home) searches high and low to find the ultimate meaning of life, bashing his head against walls in angst over how rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous and that no matter who we are or how we live our lives we are ultimately dust under the pavement. Is life about more than our number of Facebook followers, Twitter tweep count, or Klout scores? Or whether or not Brian Williams will guide the nation in mourning us?

Instead of popping the Prozac, Qoheleth concludes this:

“A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil...this is the gift of God.”

Since we’ll all be paved over eventually, why not embrace our insignificance? “Doing good while we live” isn’t about being significant in the eyes of the world. Because the eyes of the world are fickle, quickly bored, and greedy with concrete. Ultimately, if we can’t find satisfaction and reward from even the most mundane in our lives, life, most of it being mundane, will pass us by. Finally and thankfully, I’ve realized that life itself – the humble beauty of a full belly and good company and an honest day’s work – is all the significance I need.

What about you? How do you define significance? What in your life do you most find satisfaction in? How do you wish to be remembered? 

It’s a Wonderful Life is one of my all time favorite movies. If you give my husband and me enough encouragement and whiskey, we can perform the whole movie, complete with Jimmy Stewart and Lionel Barrymore impressions (“Confound it, man, I’m offering you a three-year contract”…“I’d say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider!”).

For those unfamiliar with the story, it’s about about a man who has the chance to see what life for those he loves would be like if he hadn’t been born. And it ain’t pretty. His wife, notably, is a dried up (young) spinster, and works at, you guessed it, the library. (We’re told, “She’s an old maid. She never married,” since, apparently, “old maid” did not adequately convey just how unmarried his wife would have been without him.) But I digress.

Watching Wonderful Life again got me thinking. As a lover of history, the 15th and 16th centuries in particular, what if, Henry VIII only had one wife? What if he had never batted his eyes back at The Boleyn Girl. What difference would that have made in the world?

First off, and in my opinion most regrettably, the world would never have known one of the most successful, savvy and smart monarchs ever -- Queen Elizabeth I. And this blog would be written in Spanish. Or possibly French. If Henry VIII had not broke with Rome to try and get male heirs from the beguiling and whip smart Anne, England would most likely have remained Catholic. There’d be no Pilgrims fleeing religious oppression to start anew in North America. Sadly, for the Native Americans, somebody would have shown up to wrest away their fair lands. Probably the Spanish. Maybe the French. The food would probably be better than it is now, so that would be a plus. Would the US just be more of Canada, more of Mexico, more of both, or neither? We’ll never know and we’ve no, “yet to earn his wings” angel to show us the alternative.

Many scoff at all the attention Prince William and his queen-consort-to-be have swirling about her swelling belly. And no, the fate of western civilization does not rest on Kate Middleton’s womb. But once it would have. Once upon a time people’s lives were at stake, changed by the whims of an ornery and horny king. This seems ridiculous to us now, so much so that the British have officially changed the succession rules so that the eldest child, regardless of gender, becomes the ruling monarch. If Kate and William have a bouncing baby girl, she won’t have to take up arms against her Uncle Harry – or in this day and age, a tabloid smear campaign. But back then…back then, the fate of not just England, but Europe (and eventual the whole West) swayed in the balance of one king’s “y” carrying sperm. Or lack thereof.

I guess this fascination about the what ifs is part of what drives me to read and write historical fiction. It’s a way for me to try and peer into that world and wonder: if then, what now?

In the weeks to come, I’ll tell you a bit more about the historical and other influences of Heirs & Spares, but for now, I invite you to join me in wondering, what if…

Adios amigos.