My Facebook feed usually features pretty Asian girls dancing to strange music, videos of shelter dogs getting adopted (I admit I get a little tear in my eye watching them), and music from Japanese hard rock girl groups. It’s very entertaining.
Lately, though, I’ve been getting lots and lots of videos of people going through graveyards and cemeteries looking at headstones. (The difference between a graveyard and a Cemetery is that “graveyard” is easier to spell and doesn’t have the puzzling “e” where the “a” should be.) (Oh, and a graveyard is connected to a church, whereas a Cemetery is fully functional without a house of worship.)
Many of these videos show you the final resting places of famous people. It is interesting that Marilyn Monroe’s crypt is marked only with her name and birth/death dates. No epitaph, no photo of La Marilyn. Several other famous people opted for a modest headstone, including Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and Bobby Fuller of the Bobby Fuller Four. He fought the law and the law won.
Others are more elaborate. Karen Carpenter, the greatest female vocalist of the 70s (and I will fight the man that disagrees) is buried in a family mausoleum, the Carpenter name prominent on the roof. Muhammad Ali has a very fine place in which one can sit on a bench and observe his headstone a dozen yards away. Some minor presidents such as Zachary Taylor and William Polk have nice structures over their graves.
Reggae king Bob Marley has an entire house, the grave in the back, but the house in Jamaica hosts concerts and seminars and other things throughout the year. Bob never gets lonely.
The epitaphs are the most interesting. Billy Wilder, famed screenwriter, has “I am a Writer, but then again, no one’s perfect.” Merv Griffin’s headstone reads “I will NOT be back after these messages.”
Even non-celebrities get into the act, so to speak. One epitaph reads, “It’s cold down here.” Another says: “I’d rather be fishing.” Another says: “I have nothing further to say.”
I am a weird person. I love strolling through cemeteries and looking at the final words people leave to this world. It is as close to immortality we will ever get.
It makes me think of what I want on my tombstone. Being a lawyer, I thought that “I Object!” would be a funny one. (One lawyer’s epitaph is “The Defense Rests.”)
One that would likely make many a Facebook post would be “I gotta pee.”
Or, “You shoulda seen the other guy.”
Or, “As I was saying…”
But likely I will opt for something more poetic, probably a lyric from one of my songs.
In fact, as I am the cantor at St. Joseph’s 4 o’clock Saturday vigil mass, I thought it would be cool (if there was money to do it) to have a life sized statue of me playng guitar with a bench next to me and an inscription that says “Sit and play with me a while.”
It’s amusing to think of what one’s epitaph would be, but in truth one should truly work it so that one leaves behind more than an inscription in stone. As a writer, I hope and hope that something I write will survive me. Might be Minerva James. Might be something else.
Then anyone who comes to visit me can take a part of me with them when they go–so long as they don’t chip my tombstone.
Mark Bruce, Writer 