There is a lovely poem by Linda Ellis called The Dash and it is often read at funerals.

It starts like this: “I read of a man who stood to speak at a funeral of a friend.

He referred to the dates on her tombstone from the beginning to the end.

He noted that first came the date of her 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 that she spent alive on Earth.

And now only those who loved her know what that little line was worth ...".

I mention this because last week I attended a funeral of a dear friend, Jane Thomas, who passed away after a short illness.

Even though that poem wasn’t read at the funeral, it was going through my mind.

As I looked around the packed church which, along with the car park, was bursting at the seams, it was clear to me that plenty of people loved her and knew what the dash meant.

If there is anything good about a funeral, I suppose it gives those of us left a time to reflect on the person who has gone, and it also probably puts our life back into perspective.

Of course everyone would have their own memories of what Jane’s dash meant and there were plenty of stories told at the church and afterwards about the people she had helped in one way or another.

To me, the dash meant friendship – someone who went through life trying to bridge the gap for me, particularly when I was in my late teens and early 20s, when I was carrying around a chip on my shoulder the size of Uluru.

Sure the chip may be still there but Jane and then, thankfully, my wife Sheila have helped to dust off a fair bit of it. But Jane was definitely first.

I used to play footy against her husband Paul, who was a class above me in every factor of the game. I had a big enough ego not to realise it, but the first thing Jane did for me was to encourage a friendship between Paul and I that has lasted the test of time.

I didn’t really understand how it started until I was in the church the other day and remembered that Jane was the one who would suggest I stay at their place after we played against each other because, funnily enough, Paul played for All Whites in Nambour and they lived at Alex, while I played for Souths, then Maroochydore, but lived in Nambour.

So at the time, their son Grant was a baby and I was the other bigger one who was much more trouble, especially with beer in me, but Jane looked after us all.

She would have to console me if I played badly, which was more often than not, and tell me to wake up to myself if I was sooking.

I think up to that stage of my life one of the happiest days was when Paul came to play for the Swans and our first game was against All Whites – he ran 50 metres and scored a try untouched. I remember thinking how good it was to have this bloke in our team, and I suspect Jane had a bit to do with that as well.

She was also the referee at our first presentation night together, when I may have poked Paul in the arm with a fork and he threatened to knock my block off, with me responding by sooking it once again. She sorted that out as well.

Then when Sheila and I got married with a wedding budget of not much, Jane organised her dad’s Mercedes for a wedding car, with the only proviso from Fred and Mary being “you will have to wash it yourself”.

In later years whatever I was involved in, whether it be the pantomime or losing weight or swimming, I could always rely on a phone call from Jane with either words of encouragement, money or coaching ... in most cases all three.

The last paragraph of The Dash asks the question, “So when your eulogy is being read, with your life’s actions to rehash, would you be proud of the things they say, about how you spent your dash?”

I just want to say to the Murray family, the Thomas family and friends, last Monday the greater community of the Coast answered that with a resounding “yes”.

I read something the other day that summed things up – “Life doesn’t stop with death, and a person is not dead until they are forgotten”.

Going by the love at the funeral, Jane will be with us always.