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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My dad died alone and scared with Covid in April. We weren’t allowed visits and we were separated for the three weeks he was dying. It was terrible, and my mother was ripped apart with guilt the way you are. I felt a little less terrible, since my dad was a really kind and scientific man and he knew what was needed in a pandemic - I hope his knowledge that he was making a sacrifice for public health helped him through. He was too sick to use a phone so we won’t ever know.

In any case, a relative wrote a note after Dad died that helped tremendously. His own dad had tied after a long and terrible illness. He wrote that it is important to remember that our lives are not defined by our deaths. We are more than our last days, weeks, or years. We are the totality of our lives, and the suffering at the end is just one small moment of the good and bad in our lives. It helped me remember my dad in his entirety, his long and wonderful life. He was more than his death, and so was your dad. Give it time, and you will begin to remember him as a full man, too, and not just the suffering at the end. Best wishes.[/quote]

Reminds of the poem said at my grandfathers funeral years ago.  The Dash Poem.  This part has stuck with ever since.
I read of a man who stood to speak at a funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning… to the end.
He noted that first came the date of birth and spoke of the following date with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.
For that dash represents all the time they spent alive on earth and now only those who loved them know what that little line is worth.

There is more but sometimes you forget that yes the dash is the important part.[/quote]

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