I don’t make a habit of visiting old cemeteries as some do.
The cemetery I was looking for was the last place of interest to be discovered in the small National Park that I was exploring. I had seen each of the historical markers, walked the trail to the spring house, and visited the old cabin. The cemetery eluded me.
A park ranger marked on my map the general location of the cemetery along one of the main trails. The ranger failed to mention that the headstones do not lie directly on the trail. On my second attempt, I discovered that a small foot path made a left turn from the main trail and continued approximately one-half mile up to the top of a hill.
In the shadowy silence of obscurity, gravestones stood grouped under a canopy of trees. Many of the gravestones were dated to the early 1800s. Some of the markers were broken or unreadable. The clusters of names with familial ties were easy to spot.
One such grouping of headstones included a mother, father, and three children. The parents had long outlived the children, each of whom died before the age of five. No other information was given. The stones provided only name, date of birth, date of death, and a dash in-between the dates.
Standing in the somber solitude of that forgotten place, I pondered the dash on each of the grave markers. Each dash represents a life, some long and others mournfully short. The dash does not tell of the hardships and heartaches, hard work and effort, the dreams, and the joys of the life lived. The dash does not remember accomplishments or victory over adversity. Nor does the dash remember the pain and grief of living.
The only thing the dash between the two dates can say is that someone was born, they lived, and then they died. The memory of their living is lost with the generations of people that knew them. Within three -maybe four- generations, the markers along with the lives represented by a dash are forgotten among the living.
So it will be for each of us. Our grave markers will tell people when we were born, when we died, and that we lived. The sum total of our life adventures, trials, joys and accomplishments will not fit on the single dash that represents our life. The memory of our lives and how well we live them resides in the people who know us and encounter us along life’s journey.
As the old adage says, life is made of two dates and a dash. Make the most of your dash.
Copyright 2020 T.A. Boland
Comments