The Dash and The Date

On this Memorial Day weekend, many of you will be visiting the cemetery to place flowers on the graves of your loved ones. On each tombstone and grave marker is the date of birth and date of death, but between the dates is a dash.  A story has been written about the dash along with a song.  The dash represents the life lived.  The dash is the same length for everyone – whether on a stone or from the keys of a keyboard.  Each dash is equal.  Each life has a story and purpose.  It is not the length of time but the meaning of the life.

To the world, the life has ended at the date of death.  But to those who have loved the person, the love never ends and lives on in the heart.  The memory of their lives remains fresh and alive. Time seems to lose its meaning and power when it comes to death and grief.  While the focus of grief seems to be the first year of loss as one experiences all the “firsts” without the loved one, grief is not a linear time focus.  Grief continues throughout life and is triggered when you experience something and want to share it with them or need their guidance and presence.  Grief becomes interwoven into life and one learns to live with it and also live into life.

The focus in grief is on the dash – the life your loved ones have lived.  It is changing the focus from the dying and death to how the person lived and the difference the person has made in your life.  That is the dash of life – the meaning and purpose of your loved one’s life.  The dash is about life and influence and purpose.  The dates are about birth and death.  While few people are present at the actual birth or even at the moment of death, you gather to celebrate the completion of a life.  You cannot add more memories, but the memories can sustain you.  When you look at the grave marker, it is knowing the person lived and walked this earth.

That final date.  You know how long it has been in calendar years, but it seems just like yesterday at times.  You understand time differently and measure time based on when your loved one died.  It may be a year, five years or twenty years.  It does not matter the length of time in grief.  Your view of time has changed.  It is amazing sometimes when you realize that it has been ten years since your loved one died.  It does not change the love, the meaning of their life nor the grief and loss you still feel.  The hole in your life remains.  In Heaven there is no time.  Time is a limit of the earth.  Your loved one is in Heaven where time does not matter, therefore, in your grief time does not matter.  The distance from the earthly end date has no meaning to your grief.  It is just a recognition of the loss of their physical presence.  Your loved one has never left your heart and grief has no regard to time.  The date just signifies the time you stopped seeing their physical body but their love and relationship and impact never ceased.

Take a walk through the cemetery this Memorial Day weekend.  Remember those who have come before you.  Give thanks for their life and legacy.  Pray for the families who grieve and whose grief is raw and new and full of questions and shock.  Remember the dash of life.

Elaine J. Sturtz

Living In The Different