It’s About the “Hyphen”…

I ran across a headstone in a National Cemetery. It listed the gentleman’s date of birth and date of death. Under that was the Branch and Unit, as well as the War. At the bottom it simply said, “Gone Fishing.”

I got a chuckle out of that because it sounds like something I would put on my grave as well. I stood there paying my respects and began to realize that this guy had lived a long life…yet it had all been compressed into a hyphen. An entire lifetime reduced to one symbol.

It makes a person wonder about what all he did, where he traveled, his family and many other aspects of his life. A simple hyphen cannot express all of that and seems like a huge injustice. All I know is his name and that he’s “Gone Fishing”, hopefully one day we might possibly fish together. I have a lot of questions…