This came up in two ways over the past several weeks.
The first was not directly as in the title but relatedly - my 40th High School Reunion that I went to with arm twisted by a childhood good friend and its “Memory Book” in which alumni were to answer questions that included things like “What have you been up to?” and “Have you ever been honored for anything?” Most answered with descriptions of their career accomplishments and honors and my childhood buddy was a bit perplexed that I did not mention my career at all (wrote more of enjoying NuWho, Steven Universe, and the adaptation of American Gods, and of how High School was an awkward and clueless time for me but as my wife and children will witness those features have never completely gone away).
The second and more proximate came up as a the theme of a sermon at the Rosh HaShana service I attended - that we live writing our epitaphs, and discussing if we live an end in mind. How do you hope to be eulogized?
So what do want your epitaphs to be?
I’ve settled on the following for myself:
“A curious person who mostly reached his potential.”
I like the different ways it can be interpreted depending on what people thought of me.
When my mother killed herself, I borrowed an epitaph from Cordwainer Smith:
“Out in the garden of death our young
have tasted the valiant taste of fear.
With muscular heart and reckless tongue,
they have won, and lost, and escaped us here.”
For my father, I quoted Shakespeare:
"Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. "
I once saw a very lifelike ceramic statue of a dropped soft serve ice cream cone, about two feet long. I’ve always thought it would make a great marker. It would be a wordless epitaph.