Please visit the website below and read the poem “The Dash” by Linda Ellis. She does not want her poem to be reproduced or copied but she welcomes you to read her poem on her website. I promise you that it will be worth your time to read it, and it could possibly change your life.
http://www.linda-ellis.com/the-dash-the-dash-poem-by-linda-ellis-.html
After my grandmother died in 1994, my grandfather and I would go to her grave together ever year. It was one of our little rituals. I’d go pick him up, we’d go visit Grandma, and then he would buy me lunch at the diner (insert comment on stereotypical Jews here). Each year I watched him read from his Yiddish prayer book, ask her to pray for all of us, and sob on her headstone. And every single year, he would repeat this same request: when he died, he did not want the year of his death carved into his headstone. I can still hear him telling me, “No end date!”
Me and my Gramps. He was the apple of my eye and I loved him so very much.
I hadn’t really considered my grandfather’s reasoning until recently when a dear friend introduced me to the poem “The Dash” by Linda Ellis (I really hope you clicked the link above!). I finally understand now why my Gramps was so insistent on this tiny detail, which once upon a time seemed ridiculous to me.
So here I am almost two years after his death, and at long last I recognize the lesson that my grandfather (even if inadvertently) taught me. What was most important to him was the life he lived, not the day he died. He did not want to anyone to focus on his death, but instead he wanted to be remembered for the person that he was.
Notice the difference between my grandmother’s stone and my grandfather’s. No end date!
Ever since I read that poem, I can’t stop thinking about how adamant he was about the “end date”. I also can’t stop thinking about my dash, but not in a morbid way. Quite the contrary, actually.
I have been reflecting on the many changes that have happened in my life during the last year, and I feel so incredibly grateful. I never would have chosen disability retirement if I had a choice, but I didn’t. As much as I miss my students (my children), I am secure in the fact that I taught them something, no matter how small, at some point in time. I would bet money that if they were talking about me after my passing, they would not be talking about the “end date”. They would be talking about the dash. On the other side of the coin, I find that I am a much more patient, loving, and attentive wife, sister, daughter, and friend since I stopped working. As much as I treasured every moment as a teacher, I was never really living my dash when I was working. I was the typical “live to work”, not “work to live” kind of girl. I never completely enjoyed anything because I was only ever able to focus on my job. It was always on my mind, because the job of a teacher is never done (shout out to my teacher peeps out there!). It is physical, emotional, stressful, demanding, and oftentimes, thankless. It’s no wonder that me, and my poor compromised immune system cracked under the pressure! Now that I am 100% focused on life outside of being a teacher, I am actually concentrating on my dash.
I loved being a teacher. I hope I’ll always be remembered for it (in a good way!). But now I’m living for me and enjoying every moment that I don’t spend working….or agonizing over work. I haven’t taken the teaching part out of my dash, I’m just adding to it now! I’m so grateful that I have been given the opportunity to live my dash now, before it’s too late, because I’m just getting started on this chapter of my story.
