I love Benjamin Franklin’s.
I’m not a fan or poetry. To me it’s music without sound, but I really think this bit here is a thing of beauty. I can only hope the words on my tombstone sum me up in such a refined and sublime way.
“I told you I wasn’t feeling well!”
I don’t recall the woman’s name, but in the early '80’s there was a minor shitstorm in the Municipal Cemetary of Framingham, MA. She chose an epitaph that summed things up quite succinctly: Oh, Shit!
There is not always tomorrow.
Snopes has the best epitaph ever.
Robert Louis Stevenson:
Under the wide and starry sky,
dig the grave and let me lie;
Glad did I live and gladly die
and I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you gave for me;
here he lies where he longs to be,
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
and the hunter home from the hill.
“Excuse my dust”
Dorothy Parker.
Good friend, for Jesus´ sake forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed here!
Blest be ye man that spares thes stones
And curst be he that moues my bones.
-Wm. Shakespeare
Truth serves only a world that lives by it.
“Anyway, it’s always other people who die.” – Epitaph of Marcel Duchamp.
Or how about “Confusion”?
“Here lies David St. Hubbins, and why not?”: requested epitaph for Spinal Tap lead singer.
This one is from a Massachusetts churchyard, I believe:
Of course, Spike Milligan wanted “See, I told you I was ill” on his gravestone, although in the end it was only allowed if it was written in Irish. Duirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite (although I understand that the translation is a bit iffy).
He’s buried in Winchelsea, in East Sussex.
Lady Florence Sale, indomitable Victorian mem-sahib:
Under this stone reposes all that could die of Lady Sale.
The owner of the local paintshop where I grew up had
He brought colour to our lives
That brought out a chuckle when I first saw it.
I was fond of the tombstone that just said “P. Burns”
Always good for a laugh.
Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a .44
No Les no more
Here lies the body of Mary Lee
Lived to the age of 103.
For 16 years she kept her virginity.
Not a bad record, for this Vicinity.
Johannes Kepler:
I used to measure the Heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth. The mind belonged to Heaven, the body’s shadow lies here.
I used to have a Ripley’s Believe it or Not book of gravestones, which claimed all of them were real (including some above, like the now-generally-discredited Lester Moore tombstone). Agfter all these years, I still remember a lot of them. I take no stand on their veracity:
**Here beneath this stone we lie
Back to back, My Wife and I
And when the angel’s trump shall trill
If she gets up, then I’ll lie still
Here beneath this stone our Baby lies
She neither cries nor hollers
She lived just one and twenty days
And cost us forty dollars
In Loving Memory
of Ellen Shannon
Aged 26
Fatally burned in the
Explosion of a Lamp
Filled with
Danforth’s Non-Explosive Fluid
John Yeast
Pardon Me For Not Rising
Lee
Lee
**(This one in Lee County, Mississippi, no less)
**P.S. The Old Nuisance
In memory of ________
Fell to Earth Jan. 14 1846
Had the dust brushed off him Mar. 25, 1888
**