by Brian Jeffiers

Created on: May 06, 2008

Death is a weird business anywhere you go, but here in America we seem to display extra weirdness. That's all the more reason why I admire people who pre-plan their funerals.

I come from a pretty practical family. I have a great-aunt and uncle who have had their tombstone in the cemetery for about 15 years. Neither one of them is dead right now (and neither one was dead at that time, either). I hope that when I get old enough to think that's necessary, I remember to address my epitaph.

The epitaph seems to be fading in popularity these days, and tombstones are more like data log entries. Here's his name, he was born then and died then, and the old lady is right here beside him. Every stone looks the same.

That isn't good enough for me. I want people to know 100 years after my death what kind of person I am, or at least the good parts. I have considered some options.
1. In tiny print, just below my name, have it inscribed YOU ARE STANDING ON ME.
2. On the back of the stone, write THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
3. THE BUTLER DID IT

I can't stand those flat markers that can be mowed over; if I ever had one, I'd put APPARENTLY I AM NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO BE WORTH MOWING AROUND on it. Unfortunately, the things are also too small for something so verbose.

Why not have some fun? People think that just because it's sad to be a cemetery for a funeral or to visit the grave of a dear one, that we should always be sad when we're there. Not me. I like going to cemeteries for other reasons. I visit them pretty often, even when there's nobody there that I know. I think we can tell a lot about a community by the way it treats its dead, but mostly I'm there for morbid entertainmenta prime purpose for a witty epitaph.

Documentary stones leave me cold. (Sorry. Couldn't resist.) I leave graves with so many unanswered questions when all they do is give me census data. My grandparents are in a cemetery where a woman is buried between her first and second husbands. Somebody gets buried in circumstances like that and has nothing to say about it? Come on! Where's WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON JERRY SPRINGER or, since she outlived them both, THIS IS AWKWARD. Maybe even BE CAREFUL, FRANK IS STILL GASSY.

There is an urban legend that when they moved Daniel Boone's body back to Kentucky from Missouri, they accidentally got the body of a slave. Couldn't some quick-witted mason slide into the cemetery under cover of darkness and chisel below his name (WE THINK)?

People seem to forget that unless you're my great-aunt and uncle, the stone is never there at the time of the funeral, so epitaphs are first viewed some weeks after death. The strain of death and dying is done; it's time to celebrate the life. Entertain future generations. Get an epitaph.

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