When a Dash Represents Life

What Can Unite Us Is Right Before Us

I know a pastor who used to say at almost every funeral that when you look at a gravestone, it usually has a date of birth and a date of death.

In between those dates, there is a simple dash.

Everything that the person had loved was represented in that dash. Every song they enjoyed, every meal they savored, every experience they had, every hardship or suffering was in that dash. Every person whose life they touched and everyone they had ever loved, all of it was encapsulated in that dash.

That could unite us, you know. It is true that we all share in this journey of being mortal. It is one place that we can all connect. If we want, we could understand this truth and make every person’s “dash” a little better.

Last week, we kept seeing that in our little Danish American community. On Saturday evening we gathered at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis to celebrate a friend’s 60th birthday. There was delicious food (samosas!) and a song written for the occasion. People of many ages gathered to celebrate the occasion, and our friend. We shared decades of memories.

The next afternoon in the very same space, we gathered to pay respects to the life of a woman who died in her mid-seventies. This gathering was not as festive, but there was gratitude for her well-lived life. Grief for her too-early passing. There was delicious food (open-faced Danish sandwiches!) and a song written for the occasion. People of many ages gathered to grieve, remember, and hold each other. We shared decades of memories.

My father-in-law died in October. We have been going through items and photos and memories there. We have been processing grief with laughter and hugs and head-shaking at the passage of time. We are planning a way to remember him in December.

Meanwhile, we visited a special person in the nursing home. She is going through big changes. After living independently for over 80 years, she moved through a hospital stay to transitional care to permanent residence in the nursing home. Last week she moved into hospice care. She is facing profound questions.

Watching her as she savored cherry tomatoes with better mindfulness than any monk, as she chewed on words from a book on her Kindle, and as she told stories from childhood, we recognized the mystery of living in such a quick “dash” of life, even when we reach an advanced age.

The “dash” holds mystery, and invites us to hold that together.

On Friday, we attended a memorial service for 96-year old friend of the family. We heard stories of West Denmark in Wisconsin and of Montana and Korea. There was delicious food (kringle and kransekage!). We had been hearing our own family stories from Germany and Vietnam and Tyler, Minnesota that mingled into this experience for us.

Everything we ever have seen or experienced gets encapsulated in a single dash.

In this time of cruelty and corruption, madness and (thankfully) also resistance in my country, I wonder how much better we could be if we would simply learn to appreciate the “dash” of this life. How much we share in something that goes by like a dash, even though days and months and years can seem to drag on.

This awareness of the “dash” could unite us. Recognizing that people of all genders, all races, all economic situations, all countries, share in this “dash” could open our eyes and hearts to a better way. I believe we are capable of this, even though many seem to miss it right now.

The transcendent now happens in a ripe cherry tomato, a good story, a visit, a healthy touch. It is right here before us.