the line in between two dates...

I spent this past weekend working in one of our beautiful cemeteries assisting families in finding their loved one's wresting place, as well as digging up covered vases for their various spray of flowers.  Memorial Day weekend is crazy busy in my current line of employment, but rewarding.  Thousands of families visited this past weekend.  Call me strange, but I have become very intrigued with the epitaphs on the memorial tablets in the park.  I love to walk through the cemetery and read the summations of people's lives.  The interesting thing is, most people's epitaphs are not chosen by the deceased, but by their family and friends.  Many of the markers simply give the persons name, date of birth, and the date of death, nothing more.  Even these two dates intrigue me.  So much of life occurred in the time between these two dates, but details for most are not recorded, simply a brief summation or oration is engraved.  Some of my favorites that I've seen are:  "I told you I was sick," "go away, I'm sleeping," and the one above, "He never killed a man that did not need killing."  The most common that I see in the parks really grabbed my attention more than usual this past weekend, simply, "Beloved husband, father, and grandfather."  I realize that none of these people who have died lived perfect lives, but it takes a faithful person to be rewarded by their family with such an oration of "beloved husband, father, and grandfather." 

Death is inevitable for all us, but the timing of our death is unknown.  I began to think about how each of our epitaphs can potentially change by the changing circumstances in our lives.  For instance the phrase "Beloved husband" could be ascribed a man at one time in his life, but not another.  I got way too creative on my walkabout and imagined a marker that had an epitaph that would continually change and transform itself throughout our lives with each life-altering choice we make.  Imagine words appearing and disappearing kind of mysteriously as we live, then we breath our last and whatever words appeared for that time in our life become set in stone forever - yet never fully describing who or what that individual has been throughout a lifetime. 

You can't help but think of your own life as you stroll the cemetery in this fashion.  What if your life up to this moment was all your loved one's had to surmise?  How do you want to be remembered?  What words best describe you?  I think most of us simply desire to love and be loved within the duration of time between our date of birth and death.  Some lives can't be summed up in ten words or less on stone and perhaps weren't meant to.  And if you're living daily so concerned with what others might say or think about you, you're not really living.  I'm beginning to believe that the best epitaph has no words at all and that the "dash" between the date of our birth and our death SAYS IT ALL...