4/10/2024 0 Comments Linda ellis poem called the dashSo many times I was asked why I worked with people with cancer. Yet, this strong, wise, loving, and beautifully flawed group of cancer survivors welcomed me into their group as a student intern and allowed me to learn from them what it was like to live with uncertainty, yet fully LIVE each day! I was a young mom, an even younger social worker, so many aspects of my life were uncertain and so much of what I was doing I felt I was inept. I met them at the time when I had just had my first-born, my Dad was acutely sick with his cancer and recovering from his first (and preparing for his second, though I didn’t know it at the time) bone marrow transplant. Now, I wasn’t a child when I met them, but in some ways I feel like I was. Yesterday, I was surrounded by this group of men and women I’ve really had the pleasure to grow up with over the past 16 years. Today, I want to write about the “dash”….Have you heard of it? So why do we live as if our moments are infinite, when in fact, other than taxes death is the only certainty we face on this earth.īut the “dying” and “loss” and “grief” part isn’t what I want to write about today. That statement sits somehow uncomfortably with me because it presumes the rest of us who aren’t diagnosed get a pass from the certainty of death, when in reality, none of us knows when our last breath will come on this earth. Working with people with cancer, the possibility of someone dying is omnipresent. Over the course of the 16 years I’ve been working for or volunteering for Gilda’s Club, I’ve lost count of how many funerals I’ve attended. Contact her at reporting by Andrew Bahl, Ledyard King, Rebecca Morin and Ella Lee.I attended a funeral yesterday. Bob Dole planned in D.C., Topeka and RussellĮrin Davoran is a digital producer for the USA TODAY Network. Jerry Moran's office.įuneral, burial arrangements: Memorial events for former Sen. The World War II veteran will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, according to a spokesman with Kansas Sen. His body will then be returned to Washington. Memorial services will conclude Saturday, first in his birthplace of Russell and then at the Kansas Statehouse, where Dole's body will lie in repose. Laura Kelly receive Dole's casket at Salina Regional Airport on Friday. The funeral capped two days of tributes reserved for Washington's most consequential and revered dignitaries.Ī Kansas delegation led by Gov. His rise to national prominence started in small-town Kansas.īob Dole's constant pen in hand was a reminder of World War II woundsįuneral services for Bob Dole continue Saturday in KansasĪt the funeral in Washington on Friday, a bipartisan assemblage of politicians, led by President Joe Biden, honored Dole's lasting legacy as a bridge-builder in Congress. So, when your eulogy is being read with your life's actions to rehash, would you be proud of the things they say about how you spent your dash?īob Dole spent 60 years in the political spotlight. If we treat each other with respect and more often wear a smile, remembering that this special dash might only last a little while. If we could just slow down enough to consider what's true and real, and always try to understand the way other people feel.īe less quick to anger and show appreciation more, and love the people in our lives like we've never loved before. Are there things you'd like to change? For you never know how much time is left that can still be rearranged. What matters is how we live and love, and how we spend our dash. And now only those who loved them know what that little line is worth.įor it matters not how much we own, the cars, the house, the cash. But he said what mattered most of all was the dash between the years.įor that dash represents all the time that they spent life on Earth. He noted first came the date of the birth and spoke the following date with tears. He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning to the end. I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |