LIVING THE HYPHEN

I was sitting in the waiting room of my doctor’s surgery one day recently and so happened to get to listen to the radio broadcast that they were pumping out of their speakers in an effort, I presume, to stop us all dwelling upon our own misery, and so I happened to hear a rather interesting discussion about life and death that seemed to excite the breakfast discotheque jockey and his cohorts.

Someone, one of their regular listeners I imagine, had sent in a rather moving piece of writing about those weighty matters but, in the process, had pointed out a simple something that seemed to strike the broadcasting “posse” for the very first time, much as it did me.

To paraphrase: On a gravestone they usually put your name and two dates, one giving the year your birth, and one telling everyone when you died, and they are usually separated by a hyphen, but it is the hyphen that’s the most important bit of all because that represents the actual living that the person did.

Perhaps a Doctor’s waiting room isn’t really the “best” place to be prompted into thoughts upon mortality, but that’s hardly the surgery’s fault. I presume that they broadcast the general babble of Radio 2 to attempt to brighten everybody’s mood and take their minds off the coughing and the sneezing and the general air of gloom and melancholy that seems to permeate these places, and they couldn't really have expected any of the deeper philosophies to emerge from the morning breakfast show.

Who would?

One of the surgeries which I used to visit had a sign up on the notice board apologising for having the radio on but admitting that it was necessary because otherwise patients might be able to overhear the supposedly confidential conversations that were taking place in the consulting rooms just beyond the flimsy partition walls. Whilst I’m sure that this was done with the very best of intentions, and that it achieved much of its purpose, I’m sure that I noticed one or two of the little old ladies leaning much more closely towards the wall once they had read that notice.

But, as ever, I digress...

I have started drifting away from the point or, if not the point, then the hyphen, which is quite possibly the most important punctuation mark that there is if it regularly represents an entire life lived. One short hyphen but it meant everything to the person being remembered on whichever crumbling stone, or fading page, or rusting plaque that it is written upon.

One tiny dash which tells you nothing at all about the hopes and dreams of the person being remembered, nothing of what made them laugh or cry or what they did, or who they met on their journey through their life. It tells us little about whether they were good or bad, notorious or obscure, rich or poor, popular or despised.

So perhaps we all need to try just a little bit harder to make the most of our own little hyphen, especially if, when it comes down to it, that it really is all there is,  and to try and make it stand out more from its humble spot between those emphatic and imposing dates, and feel just that bit more significant.