Everything is Trivial except Your DASH!

I am writing this a few days before Mother’s Day 2024. It’s a poignant time for me. My mother passed away in March, a few weeks short of 102 (1922-2024). A hundred and two! Quite a feat.

She was born during the Warren G Harding administration (if you can’t think of any real accomplishments of his presidency – you’re not alone). The depression had an incredible impact on her. Starvation knocked on her door during that time and saving money for times of misfortune was important for her throughout the rest of her life. She graduated high school in 1941 and lived through the privations of the war working in a shoe factory. Most every boy in her high school class went off to war and some never returned.

But those things aren’t her epilogue. Her life was about family and friends. Because her own mother was less than loving, she decided to be the opposite kind of mother – one who always expressed her love to her children and her friends, especially Annie. Annie was her best friend from 1929 until 2001 when Annie passed. Not many of us have a best friend for over 70 years.

Go back to the opening paragraph and take a second look at those dates, “1922-2024”. That little line that we put between the birth year and the end year represents so much. In mom’s case, it represents a woman who brought laughter and love into our lives. That dash represents all the meals, cookies and cakes. It represents all the hugs and “I Love You’s”. It represents the smiles, friendship, compassion and caring that she shared with her family and friends for those 102 years.

That “DASH” is everything!

The dash represents our time on this planet and how we touch our family, our friends, our coworkers and everyone we meet. What it doesn’t represent are the assets we accumulated, the size of our bank account, the cars we owned, the clothes we wore, the degrees we accumulated and the projects we completed. It’s highly unlikely that any of that will be discussed when your friends and family gather to discuss your dash.

Instead, your dash will represent all the smiles, hugs, laughter and joy you brought into the world. It will represent the gifts you gave to people who couldn’t ever pay you back. It will represent how you treated your neighbor, the parking attendant, the homeless man and everyone else you touched in large and small ways.

None of us knows our expiration date. Tomorrow? Next month? Next year? Thirty years? What we do know is that there is an expiration date. And we know that there will be a dash. And that dash will represent all of who you were, how you changed your little part of the world and what people will remember about you.

But that highlights an inescapable question. If you were to die today, would you be happy with the dash you have? Or would you want to change it? What would you want to improve?

Honestly, I don’t know how you would answer that question, but my dash isn’t all I want it to be. I’ve got a lot of work to do and I don’t know how long I’ll have to do it.

What I do know is that the DASH is everything.

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