I have read that what is most important about life is not how long you live but what happens during the dash on your tombstone. The dash is what is carved into the stone between your date of birth and your date of death.

The dash is what you do with your life.

My father wasn’t a famous man. He doesn’t have a building named after him, and he didn’t graduate from college. There is no portrait of him in the boardroom of a big corporate office. He wasn’t a member of the prestigious country club in town. He didn’t live in a fancy house with marble countertops, stainless steel appliances, and a stacked stone fireplace. He never drove a Cadillac but always wanted one.

I wish he had bought the Cadillac he wanted. He would have enjoyed driving it and showing it to his buddies. I wish he didn’t worry about scratching up the inside of the trunk with his golf bags, or throwing his mud-caked golf shoes onto the back seat floorboard.

He taught me how to wash my car. It used to annoy me when he would bring over a chair, sit down and tell me what I needed to do better. He would bring the hose from around back and throw me an old towel to wipe off the water, saying, “You have to do that so it won’t make spots!” and “Don’t wash it in the sun!” He would drag out different gadgets for washing the car—soft strips of cloth at the end of a rod, multiple car-wash solutions, an old bucket that had once held cat litter, a glove with chamois on the outside, and Windex for the inside windows. After I was done, he always walked around to inspect my work. “You missed a spot!” or “You need to scrub the tires!”

I would drive over to my Mama and Daddy’s house to wash my car. I have a hose at my house, plus a couple of old cat litter buckets filled with car wash solution, chamois cloths, and old towels. But it always seemed lonely to wash my car alone without my Daddy watching and telling me what to do. My car hasn’t seen a bucket of suds in quite a while.

Daddy taught me how to wash my car. He taught me to do it well. It’s a little thing. But it shows a lot about what kind of Daddy he was. He taught, he participated, he explained. He was patient. He was so, so kind. He taught me that.

He lived his Dash well…

Happy Heavenly Father’s Day, Poppy…