How You Spend Your Dash: Why the Way You Die Doesn’t Negate the Way You Lived

Many years ago, I was sitting in a church for a young man’s funeral. He was still in high school and had collapsed on stage during a dress rehearsal. As I sat in the pews mourning his short life, I kept thinking: he was just a child, he didn’t have time to really live or experience the world.

Then his father walked to the podium. Through tears, he read a poem by Linda Ellis called “The Dash.” That moment has stayed with me all these years. The poem’s message is simple and profound: what matters most is not the dates on either side of our lives, but how we spend the dash between them.

After he finished reading, a line of people stood up to share their memories of this young person, the laughter, the love, the kindness he gave so freely. Even though his life was short, it was full.

This blog is inspired by that poem, and by the truth that the way someone dies does not erase the way they lived.

The Dash Is the Story

We talk a lot about legacy like it's something grand you leave behind: money, monuments, awards. Legacy is those things sometimes, but mostly it is a quiet accumulation of small, ordinary acts. The dash is ordinary and holy at the same time: dishes washed, hands held, stories told, apologies given, dances taken, seeds planted. It’s not always dramatic. It’s mostly a string of choices, some brave, some clumsy, all human.

To spend your dash well doesn’t mean you never fail. It means you keep returning to the things that matter: presence, care, curiosity, accountability. It means you choose again and again how you meet the day.

The Myth That Death Rewrites a Life

When someone dies in a way that shocks or shames violence, addiction, or scandal, our culture tends to let that endpoint define the whole arc. We reduce complicated lives to a single headline. That’s not just incomplete; it’s cruel. A final moment cannot dissolve years of tenderness, courage, grief, and growth.

Think of a tree cut down by a storm. The last act is violent. But the tree’s rings still tell the seasons it survived, the shelter it offered, the birds it fed. The final moment is part of the story, not its full measure.

Holding both truths is powerful: the reality of harm and the truth of the life that came before and beyond it. We can honor pain without letting it cancel the person’s capacity to be loved, to teach, and to have been kind.

And this works in the other direction, too. When a person has spent their dash harming, manipulating, or withholding kindness, their death does not magically redeem their choices. The funeral doesn’t erase the fractures they left behind. The gravestone doesn’t rewrite the dash. Just as tragedy cannot undo a life of love, death cannot sanctify a lifetime of cruelty.

The dash tells the truth. The way you lived matters. And that truth remains long after the last breath.

Honoring the Dash in Our World Today

When I think about the dash, I also think about the world we are living in right now. There are people who use their voices, their platforms, and their positions to harm through suppression, cruelty, hate, or refusal to come together. Their dash, no matter how long or short, carries the weight of those choices.

There are also young lives and not only the young whose dashes are stolen by the hands of others, by violence, by tragedy, or by illness. These losses leave us aching, wondering how to honor what was cut short. We cannot undo what has been taken, but we can carry their memory forward, remembering their laughter, their kindness, their presence. In doing so, we let their dash ripple beyond the years they were given.

And what about those whose lives were marked by harm, by hardness, by cruelty? Mourning them is complex. I find myself saying, I am sorry their life was cut short, and that they never had the opportunity to change their dash to soften, to grow, to love better. That acknowledgment doesn’t excuse their choices, but it holds the hope that every dash carries the possibility of change, right up until the end.

Practical Ways to Spend Your Dash (Gentle, Doable, Human)

1. Show up for small things. Presence compounds. A single consistent habit, a weekly call, a bedtime read-aloud, a shared cup of tea becomes a scaffolding of meaning.

2. Practice repair. When you hurt someone, say so. Repair is not always possible, but the attempt reshapes future dashes.

3. Choose courage over comfort, sometimes. Speaking an uncomfortable truth, leaving a toxic situation, or forgiving when it’s hard are choices that make the dash luminous.

4. Cultivate an inner life. Meditation, journaling, prayer, or movement helps you live with more clarity and less reactivity.

5. Make your work matter. Work doesn’t have to be heroic to be meaningful. Doing small things well, teaching, tending, and creating, accumulates into a life that matters.

6. Live with witness. Let people sit with you in your sorrow and your joy. Bearing witness is one of the most human things we can offer.

   
   

When the Dash Ends in Tragedy: How to Hold Complexity

If someone you love dies violently or unexpectedly, grief is raw and complicated. It’s okay to feel anger, confusion, and a deep need for answers. But alongside those feelings, try to remember the whole person: the jokes, the recipes, the quiet generosity. Let the memory of their everyday goodness stand beside your grief not to minimize pain, but to protect the truth of who they were.

If you are a survivor, or the loved one of someone who was harmed, remember: your life story is not a single wound. Your courage, your capacity to love, the ways you survived and kept going — those are central to your dash too.

A Short Practice: Naming Your Dash

This five-minute exercise is for when you want to feel steadier about how you’re spending your life.

1. Sit comfortably and breathe slowly for three full breaths.

2. Imagine your dash as a line in front of you. Picture one word that describes how you want people to remember the way you lived (e.g., “gentle,” “courageous,” “present”).

3. List three small, practical things you can do this week that align with that word. Keep them simple: a phone call, a 10-minute walk with a friend, an apology you’ve been avoiding.

4. Choose one and set a specific time to do it.

5. Close with the intention: “Today I tend my dash.”

   
   

Journal Prompts to Explore Your Dash

• When I think of the phrase “how I want to be remembered,” what feelings come up?

• What small rituals or habits give my life meaning right now?

• If I were to live the next month as if it were a model of my dash, what would I change?

• Who in my life best embodies a dash I admire? What do they do differently?

  
  

A Forward Thinking Invitation

The dash is not a burden; it’s an invitation. It asks you not for perfection but for presence. It asks you to choose often imperfectly toward the things that matter: love, honesty, repair, curiosity, and gratitude.

Even when endings are cruel or chaotic, the dash remains full of possibility. The way someone dies cannot cancel the kindness they offered, the justice they sought, or the love they left behind. And the same is true in reverse: death does not erase harm. The dash is the record of a life lived — for better or worse.

So tend your dash. Fill it with what matters. Because that small line between dates will always be bigger than we think.