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| Photo Created by James Dacey, Jr using Co-Pilot |
A priest once stood at a gravesite, saying prayers over
someone he'd known his whole life. It was a small gathering, maybe a dozen
people, scattered around the hole in the ground, shifting their weight, waiting
for it to be over. After the final "Amen," after everyone had walked
away, he stayed. He knelt down and looked at the stone. Really looked at it.
Two dates. A name he'd known for decades. And between them - a dash. One
small, horizontal line carved into granite. That tiny mark represented
seventy-three years of living. Seventy-three years of breakfasts and birthdays
of arguments and reconciliations, of dreams pursued, and opportunities missed.
An entire human existence, all the love given, all the pain endured, all the
choices made, reduced to a symbol half an inch long. And in that moment, the
priest understood something he'd never quite grasped before: everything that
mattered about this person's life was in that dash. And almost nobody had shown
up to remember it.
The dates told you when they arrived and when they left. But the dash? That was
the mystery. That was the story only the people who loved them could tell. And
as the priest looked around at the empty chairs, at the small handful of
mourners who'd bothered to come, he realized something devastating: this
person's dash had been wasted. Not on purpose. Not maliciously. Just quietly. A
life lived for the wrong things, accumulation, comfort, control, and when it
ended, there was almost nobody left to care. He thought about other funerals
he'd done. The ones where you couldn't fit everyone in the church. Where people
flew in from across the country just to be there. Where strangers stood in the
back because they'd been touched by this person's kindness, generosity, and love.
Those funerals told you everything. The crowd, or the lack of one, was the
report card. It was proof of whether a dash had been filled with what mattered
or wasted on what didn't.
That story changed everything for me. Because once you see it, you can't unsee
it. Your life, my life, every life, is going to end up as two dates and a dash.
Same size as everyone else's. Same shape. Same humble little line. And the only
question that matters is this: what are you putting in it? Not what will be
carved into the stone, nothing will be. But what will be carved into the hearts
of the people you leave behind? Will they show up? Will they weep? Will they
tell stories about how you loved them, served them, saw them, stayed? Or will
your funeral be a small gathering of people who came out of obligation,
shifting their weight, waiting for it to be over?
The dash is ticking. Right now. Today. And what you do with it, the people you
love, the mercy you give, the presence you offer, the life you actually live
instead of the one you keep planning to live someday, that's what echoes.
That's what lasts. That's what fills the dash. The stories in this series?
They're all about that. About waking up to what matters before it's too late.
About choosing dash-worthy living over dash-wasting distraction. About making
sure that when your time comes, the people who matter will be there. Because
they knew. They felt it. Your dash wasn't empty. It was full.
©2026 James Dacey, Jr.
