The Dash
If you've never read the poem, "The Dash," by Linda Ellis, I suggest you take a few minutes to read it. Here's a snippet:
I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning… to the end.
He noted that first came the date of birth and spoke of the following date with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.
When someone we know (or don’t know) passes away, we celebrate their life with a moving eulogy or a collection of anecdotes that mark the impact they made on others. I hate funerals and hospitals - not that expect anyone to say they like either one - but I’ve long been freaked out by both.
In 2001 as a freshman in college, two of my friends who lived across the hall from me in the dorm were killed in a car accident coming home from Spring Break. A year later in 2002, a ruptured brain aneurysm nearly killed my mom.
Since that moment, I've been on a constant journey to find my purpose and what I want my life to mean. It wasn't until I went to the funeral of a former coworker and long-time Ragin' Cajuns baseball coach Tony Robichaux that I realized we have a year we're born, a dash, and year we're gone, but it's the dash that people will remember. I read the countless articles and anecdotes about Tony's impact on the university and the community, and I thought back to the years I was fortunate enough to work with him.
What continues to stick with me is the numerous stories from Tony's life and career. Those stories shared the type of man he was and how he helped mold young men outside the sport of baseball.
I certainly won't be remembered as the best baseball SID in school history. Far from it, actually. Nor will I be remembered for the number of books I write or the number of times I'm published. As I've entered the dreaded phase of my life - "WTF do I do now that I finished my Ph.D." - I'm left focusing more on that dash...
I'm a father. I'm a husband. I'm a friend. I can be a better one of all three.
I've worked in college sports. I've been a college teacher. I've been a consultant. I'm an author. I've worked my entire adult life in communications and public relations. I'm trying to figure out an academic career (if any).
All because I'm in search of my dash means.
I started writing notes to my daughter nearly three years ago. I never thought they would become a book nor did I imagine I'd sell 600+ copies across the country. I wonder what I could have done differently. Maybe I could have written the book differently and sold more copies or maybe I shouldn't have written it at all. I don't write in the hopes of becoming famous. I write in hopes to help someone else. I teach to better my students and myself.
Is that my dash? Or does my "dash" resemble more of a run-on sentence in Morse Code?
Selfishly, I haven't been present and "in the moment" as much as I wish I had been, but I need to be focused on the present rather than focused on a beautiful piece of punctuation that is misused by many and rarely understood.
But our metaphorical dash doesn't have to be misunderstood.
