On the grave of one Edward Morgan, in St. Bride’s Manor in Glamorganshire reads,
“O Earth! O Earth! Observe this well,
that earth in earth shall come to dwell
then earth in earth shall close remain,
till earth from earth shall rise again."
There are a variety of methods for deciding what to put on a tombstone. Sometimes a poet, but also someone with a life too short to say all they want heard, will write an epitaph into their will. Sometimes the executor or executrix of the deceased will have something they’ve labored over and want written down. I suspect most often, however, the ghost of the deceased will think of the perfect thing to say in hindsight, as we all do hours or days after it needs to be said, and will haunt the engraver, driving him or her mad until he or she acquiesces.
Epitaphs are, perhaps, the most revealing pieces of human literature. Provided, of course, that you are known by few and loved by less. The grander your image is in life, the less honest you’re spoken of in death. Though when you are loved wholly and sincerely enough, reverence and formality may dissipate.
In a graveyard in Shelby, Yorkshire a tombstone reads,
"Here lies my wife, a sad slattern and shrew,
If I said I regretted her,
I should lie too."
My Grandmother died; Grandma Deb, we called her. She had one wish, a wish she burned into our skulls from the very beginning. “Do not make me into a saint when I die.” she would say, “tell everyone that your Grandma was a bitch, and at my funeral sing the wicked witch is dead.”
We did honor her request. Quietly at the end of the funeral service, my siblings, my cousin and I gathered 'round her urn, and through tears and sobs we sang “ding dong the witch is dead, the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead.”
I suspect, though I am by no means an expert in such things, that love, hope and optimism and other fool’s virtues are not about taking the world and sifting through the muck, darkness and pain in order to find the good. Rather, it is taking the world for what it is: atrocity, freedom, genocide, forgiveness, war, family, nations, borders, racism, death, sexism, birth, faith, and random acts of kindness. Most importantly, we must love; for when you love, formality and reverence and logic and the enlightened correct answers of the wise and cynical fade. They disperse into the the infinite vacuum of our universe.
And so at the funeral for humanity, there will be plenty of profound, wise and beautifully worded odes to our achievements. We may choose to ignore the faults and focus on the things that will be missed. On our grave there may be some defining last words: a quote from Shakespeare, Churchill or Abraham Lincoln. Then, we fools will stand around the urn, for not much more than ash will be left. We will reminisce, discussing huge mistakes like murder, torture, the 80’s. We will talk about Will, the abusive alcoholic, Sherry, the single mother that worked herself to nightly exhaustion so that little Emma never went hungry yet still had the energy and youth to play with her daughter every night, Rick, who hung himself when he realized that he couldn’t be the father that his children needed, Nicholas, who took in Rachel and Noah as if they were his own. And we will think of a fitting Epitaph, one that may not grace the official monument, but the true last words.
