The Dash

I’ve always joked I’m 29 forever.

You may have already read that this morning.

I still think that would be hilarious on a headstone.

“Whitney. 29 forever.”

Let my kids argue with the cemetery about the math.

But here’s the part that keeps tugging at me.

Every headstone has two dates.

And in between them is that tiny little dash.

That’s it.

Birth year. Death year.

And this short line that is supposed to represent decades of living.

And I don’t know why, but that feels… insufficient.

Because that dash holds everything.

The debt.

The mortgage.

The car payments.

Living paycheck to paycheck.

Busy living for the kids.

Busy building for the future.

Busy surviving the now.

The dreams we quietly shelved because they felt unrealistic.

Or irresponsible.

Or too late.

But were they?

Or did we close the door out of habit because looking for another key felt risky?

We spend so much of life in routine mode.

Alarm.

Coffee.

Commute.

Meetings.

Laundry.

Groceries.

Repeat.

And if you are a parent, add in sports schedules, homework, packed lunches, late-night talks, and being everything to everyone.

Some days you collapse into bed thinking,

I did a lot today.

But did I live today?

And somewhere in the middle of all that, you catch yourself thinking,

Is this what life is supposed to be?

What am I even building?

Is my dash going to be full… or just busy?

We measure success in strange ways.

Is it a title?

A magazine feature?

A stadium with your name on it?

Getting invited into rooms where everyone finally thinks you belong?

Or is it breaking your own personal record?

Helping a kid believe in herself?

Showing up steady when someone else is falling apart?

And then I had this weird thought.

What if headstones had digital frames.

Stay with me.

What if instead of a cold slab of granite and a two-inch line, there was a small screen that rotated through the photos you took?

Arena dust hanging in the air at dusk.

A blurry truck selfie because you were laughing too hard.

A hospital bracelet you never expected to wear.

A kid’s grin after finally getting it right.

A quiet coffee at sunrise before the world woke up.

Because those pictures are your dash.

Those moments are the dash.

Not the title.

Not the salary.

Not the golf game with the elites.

The life inside the frame.

And I’ll be honest.

I’ve had seasons where my digital frame would have looked like survival, not living.

Busy.

Responsible.

Exhausted.

Busy living for the kids and forgetting to live for myself.

Comfortable on the outside.

Quietly restless underneath.

That’s the part no one sees in the granite.

And if we are being real, you probably will not find a headstone for me in a cemetery anyway.

I am not meant to settle in the dirt.

Plant me under a tree. Scatter me somewhere with wind. Let me haunt an arena. Something dramatic. Something slightly inconvenient.

But even if I skip the stone, the dash still exists.

Because at the end of it all, no one stands there and says,

“She had manageable debt.”

“She answered every email.”

“She kept everything safe and predictable.”

They say,

“She loved hard.”

“She tried.”

“She showed up.”

“She made a difference.”

We do not control how long the dash is.

Some are long.

Some are cut short.

But we do get to decide whether ours feels alive.

If the dash is all we get in stone, make sure your real life is too big to fit inside it.