Elizabeth Edwards Can Cut John Out of Her Will, but Not Out of Her Legacy

With death, Elizabeth Edwards has closure, but do we?

The same day we learned that Edwards had left her entire estate to her children and nothing to her estranged husband, word followed that former vice presidential nominee John Edwards might be marrying Rielle Hunter, the woman with whom he fathered a child while his wife was diagnosed with incurable cancer.

Maybe John Edwards will marry Rielle Hunter this summer, as the National Enquirer reports, and maybe he won't; the tabloid has been both right and wrong about Edwards, particularly about the couple's engagement, which the paper initially claimed occurred in February 2010.

Regardless, the two events will remain tied in our memories, as Elizabeth Edwards' life and death continue to defy easy resolution. Hard as Edwards tried to determine her legacy by both holding onto John for her children's sake and cutting him out of her will six days before she died, she couldn't. She could cut him out of her will but she can't cut him out of her legend, which he will continue to rewrite with his choices. Her act was admirable but futile.

The symbolic gesture may also have little practical consequence. The will does not explicitly mention who will receive her book royalties, any joint income or even the 28,000-square-foot house she told Melinda Henneberger made up for years of military modesty. Perhaps the house was not mentioned because it was not hers to give. Still, it is unclear who will live in the home she built -- her children, her not-quite-ex, his new wife?

Her legacy is not the "furniture, furnishings, households goods, jewelry, china, silverware and personal effects and any automobiles" in her estate, although bequeathing those sentimental items to her children likely keeps them in her family and out of anyone else's hands.

And Edwards' legacy is complicated by the contradictory portraits of her painted by those who loved her grace and strength and those who felt battered by her behavior. Her legacy is not hers alone. It will always be joined to another's: her husband, his mistress, her daughters' and sons'. That's true for all of us, but especially for women, whose accomplishments are often seen as relative.

We are described as: Wife of, mother of, daughter of. Our lives are judged in relation to others, and its meaning is interpreted by what happens next. We are: Survived by . . . Mourned by . . . Honored by . . . And we don't get to choose all whose names follow ours in those listings or how their actions redefine us.

There are the associations we seek and the associations we cannot escape, and Edwards was defined by both. The final chapter in Elizabeth Edwards' story will continue to be written by those of us watching events unfold.

When 28-year-old daughter Cate, the executor of Edwards' estate, marries Trevor Upham, we will imagine her mother proud.

When 10-year-old son Jack graduates from high school, we will watch whether he heads to Chapel Hill, his parents' alma mater, or Princeton (his older sister's) or somewhere else.

When the investigation into John Edwards' campaign spending ends, we will wonder how Elizabeth would have felt.

She lives again then dies again in our minds every time news spreads of someone close to her, leaving us to bear the burden of honoring her as her husband surely did not. In the paperback version of "Resilience," Elizabeth Edwards wrote: "Is it too much to want your obituary, when written, to be about your own life, not the lives of the worst people who came into your life?"

It was not too much to want, but it was too much to expect. Especially when the obituary was only her ending, not ours.