This story owes its origins to a very lovely eulogy I heard at a funeral recently. The concept of “the dash” was the lynchpin of the priest’s oratory celebrating the life of the recently deceased. It struck me as a beautifully simple yet still thought-provoking way to think about the meaning of a life. I have attempted to capture that intriguing simplicity here.

Daniel Patrick O’Reilly
Beloved son, husband, and father
December 31, 1842 – May 12, 1918

That’s all it said – and even that I had to decipher. The stone was faded from years of wind and rain, the marble worn to a pale yellowish-white like old bones. Several of the chiseled letters and numbers were rubbed nearly smooth. Fortunately, Daniel Patrick O’Reilly’s parents gave him a fairly straightforward name, and whoever buried him exhibited a similar tendency with the inscription, or I might not have been able to figure it out at all. His was the first grave I saw when I walked into the old cemetery today, the first of many inscriptions I read as I meandered along the winding paths toward the river.
Continue reading The Dash (Fiction)