She lived a beautiful life. It was one filled with flowers, joy, and love. It was one of many hugs, homemade family recipes, and exchanging of stories.

This woman I speak of was my grandmother, Marlene. She was fairly tall and had this harmonious yet beautifully obnoxious laugh. She had three grandkids and cared for them all so deeply with pride. We were her happiness –even the people at her work knew us because of how frequently she talked about us.

Marlene was a strong woman who worked hard to support her family and to travel the world. She and her husband had traveled to many places, including an Alaskan cruise. Though she didn’t make it to all of the places she had planned to visit, I am picking up where she left off.

She had an incredible knack for baking and cooking and enjoyed spreading the love with her sisters, Terry and Rosemary. When the dinner was in the oven and the cake was cooling off, she’d wander into her garden. It overflowed with wildflowers that blossomed with her love.

It’s strange to say that traveling makes me feel closer to her. Just like when I sit in a garden of gardenias or see a cardinal land on a tree nearby. It feels as though she’s still here.

Though I believe her time was cut much too short, I also believe that she lived her dash.

When I say “lived her dash," I’m referring to the poem that a friend of hers had read at her funeral titled, "Live Your Dash” by Linda Ellis.

Even though it has been four years since her passing, I still think of her. I think of her and I remember this poem because it truly embodies all she was. Marlene spent her dash well. She loved, therefore she lived.

Marlene inspires me to live on, even though it hurts to not have her here with me. It sparks change in me and forces me to think about the things I wish to accomplish in life and sprint towards them, for we never know when the end is near.

The thing about death is that you never truly know. You never know when it’ll come, what will be said about you, and what you will leave behind. No one will truly know what had lain between the birthdate and death date. Tombstones are meant to be ominous, with bare minimum details that are nowhere near as worthy as your life’s story or accomplishments.

At Marlene’s funeral, I was gifted two things: a snow globe and a necklace. One would think that these were from Marlene, but they were not. The snow globe was from a close friend of hers who was supposed to travel with Marlene to Germany, but Marlene had gotten too ill to go. The snow globe was meant to be Marlene’s birthday present, but she had passed well before it came. It had an Edelweiss flower, which represented our German heritage, surrounded by light green grass trapped in serene glittered water. The irony in this is that when I was gifted this, I did not know the woman. She introduced herself as my grandmother’s best friend from work and explained how she basically watched me grow up through my grandmother’s memories and stories. She apologized for my loss, handed me the box, and explained the story behind it.

It was yet another remembrance that she had passed too soon.

I was also gifted a necklace with three words written onto a round pendant. It read “Live your Dash”. I wake up every morning and look at the snow globe, and then put on the pendant. I look in the mirror and smile because though she is not physically with me, her spirit is.

It may be silly to say that a necklace made of scratched metal has sentimental value, but it is more than that. It is a promise I have yet to fulfill: I must live my dash in an equal or greater way than Marlene did.

This is my debt to her.

And so, I shall.