Have you thought about your tombstone yet?

I don’t want to be morbid, but have you considered what you want carved on your tombstone?

Many of us don’t give that much thought until it’s too late. At that point, somebody who doesn’t even like you may get the job. Or worse yet, they’ll ask your ex-wife to come up with something.

That’s why I recently looked up the epitaphs of a few famous dead people—just to get ideas, of course. I don’t believe in plagiarism. But, hey, they are dead.

Here are some I like, although none are set in stone. At least not for me. Yet anyway.

I had high hopes for Frank Sinatra’s marker which reads, “The best is yet to come.”  But it’s not my way to take that away from him.

John Quincy Adams had them put, “This is the last of earth. I am content,” which is kinda’ nice.

Robert Frost’s marker reads “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” Not to be outdone, Virginia Woolf had them write “Against you I will fling myself unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!”

Both are good, but even I hesitate to steal from the likes of those two.

Hank Williams put “I’ll never get out of this world alive” on his. But doesn’t that apply to just about everybody?

My favorite so far is the one for Dr. Seuss. It says, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened. “

Thank goodness he didn’t go with green eggs and ham.

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3 Comments

    The Conversation

  1. Billy Chism says:

    Good column, Emory.

    One of my favorite was from Celestine Sibley, who told her daughter she wanted this on her tombstone: “She lived; she died; she had a real good time.”

  2. Frank says:

    Good stuff