E Words...for Eternity

E is for Epitaph

Today, I decided to read some epitaphs in honor of E-weeks. Epitaphs are often concise evaluations of a person's life found on gravestones or plaques for the cremated, written by the deceased, those who knew him/her, or whoever was doing the carving. Similar to last words, they've since fallen out of fashion and are rarely recorded or remembered. Popularly, the famous and influential receive engraved epitaphs while the common and inconsequential have simply dates and names and perhaps a cross, presumably because it was expensive to etch additional words into stone and people really only want to know how old you were when you died anyway, so they can say things like 'aah, so sad, a life cut short' or 'just before his 33rd birthday, a shame'. What's a real shame is that the unknown don't get epitaphs and explanations on their headstones. I know who Benjamin Franklin is, I don't need an explanation of his life, but that man over there, who is he, and why is he buried next to his daughter and not his wife? Either way, I think all headstones should feature epitaphs and explanations of a person's life, or at the very least their death. Sometimes people die in more interesting ways than they lived. It would increase cemetery visitation exponentially.

Below are Eleven Epitaphs I enjoy. I'm going to work on writing my own now. I can't pass up an opportunity to say something that will be set in stone. It surprises me that so many people do. You have your whole life to think about it and you come up with nothing, now that's embarrassing.

"If you live life right death is a joke as far as fear is concerned" - Will Rogers (himself)

"Don't Try" - Charles Bukowski (by himself)

"O friends, don't cry - it's just unused sleep." - Walter Chiari (by himself)

"Here lies the body of Richard Hind,Who was neither ingenious, sober, nor kind." - Richard Hind

"He lies here, somewhere." - Werner Heisenberg (unknown) of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Look it up.

"Excuse My Dust." - Dorothy Parker (by herself)

"The Only Proof He Needed for the Existence of God was Music." - Kurt Vonnegut (himself)

Royal O'Reilly Tenenbaum (1932-2001) Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Remains Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship - Royal Tenenbaum (At his suggestion)

Here lies the body of

a girl who died,

Nobody mourned and

nobody cried.

How she lived and

how she fared,

Nobody knew and

nobody cared.

- Gussie (an orphan)

"What is it like after you are dead? Like it was before you were born and for just as long."
- Eugene Leighton Lawler

"Sh-h-h" - Thomas O. Murphy