It’s about the life you lived
Not the way it ended
How much can a dash say about a person?
I’d be inclined to say nothing. However, again and again, we use it to depict an entire lifetime.
When a life ends, a grave is dug and a tombstone is created. Suddenly decades of life and living get squished into a dash. Every conversation, every memory, every moment is just a line.
That’s all. A birth date, a date of death, and a little dash that represents everything else in between.
It’s so incredibly underwhelming
My uncle’s tombstone reads:
1970–2019
Every time I visit his grave it throws me off. Not just because I cannot believe he’s not in my life anymore. Or that I won’t hear his stupid jokes. Or that someone so great and so kind died so so young. I mean, yes all of those throw me off, but they also make me sad.
Instead, I think about how unrepresentative that dash is of his 49 years. How his forty-nine years full of life and laughter and happiness and love and memories are in that little line.
I don’t care when he was born. And I don’t dwell on how he died.
But that dash... I’ll remember that for the rest of my life.
We almost always hear the tragic circumstances that ended a human life. Maybe it was a valiant battle with cancer. Or an unexpected accident.
But no matter what it was, I am inclined to say it doesn’t really matter.
I don’t care about how hard he fought cancer. I don’t want to remember that.
I want to remember the 48 years that were full of life, love, and happiness. The forty-eight years spent making memories with people he loved, the forty-eight years he spent living life.
I’ll be damned if his legacy is the one year he was fighting cancer.
He was the life of any party.
As a kid, he was our personal jungle gym. Our permanent piggyback ride. The guy who would always play Wii-sport tennis with us (half the time never moving from the couch). He was the adult who would sit at the kids table — by choice.
He was the teller of every joke (or the butt of every joke). The player of every sport (which would always be followed up with a buffet meal).
I refuse to let the six months he spent using varying degrees of walkers, canes, and wheelchairs, overcome the 49 years he spent being active, hungry, and happy.
He was the rock in my family. The go-to-guy.
I remember the day it hit me that he was really truly gone.
I was filling out an emergency contact for a therapy form. And it reminded me that he was the emergency contact on every permission slip I ever signed. He was the personal chauffeur and credit card I used whenever I had to buy my parents a gift.
He meant so much to me. So much to other people. And I think that’s what a legacy is.
Your legacy is what people remember of you when you’re gone. It’s the memories you made when you were living life. How you touched the hearts of others.
The way you made people feel lives on long after you’re gone.
Nothing I can write will really express what I really want to say. So I guess I’ll end with this:
That line might be small and pretty inconsequential — but your life... well you were were larger than life itself.
And I’m forever grateful to have been a part of the line that was your life, and that you are a part of mine.
