The Laughter of the Dead

I've always loved walking through cemeteries, and before you start thinking that's creepy, know that there is a large population of the living who love to haunt graveyards. Call it prevenge.

It's fantastic to read the words by which people choose to be remembered. I've seen poems, usually about the darkness of death offset by the glory into which the deceased has now passed. Not disciplined in recording these, however, I perused The Epitaph Browser to find the following:

• Wife of Peter Leslie
  She was!
  But words are wanting to say what.
  Think what a wife should be,
  And she was that.


• Christopher Wren
  If you seek my monument,
  look around you
  


• John T. McMahon
  He was a failure as a husband and father
  He was insane 15 years because of liquor
  But died sober
  May Christ have mercy on his soul
  He was not a pilgrim
  


• Owen Moore
  Gone away
  Owin' more
  Than he could pay.


• *This one's on a plaque fixed to the bottom of a headstone of a 4-year-old*
  Sacred to the Memory of
  Eliza Crowhurst
  
  A devoted mother who carved this headstone
  On this grave and wheeled it in a barrow
  From Percydale to the cemetery
  To erect it thereon.
  The memory of the just is blessed
  Mother's Day Avoca 1963


• Bonnie Anderson
  I don't want to talk
  About it now.


• Abe Bell
  He has gone to the only place
  where his own works are excelled.


• Anne and Charles Lindbergh
  ...If I take the wings of the morning
  and
  dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea....


• Alfonso Luis Herrera
  El error tiene la victoria, pero la verdad tiene la esperanza
  (Error has the victory, but Truth has the hope)


• Fritiof Nilsson Piraten
  Här under är askan av en man som hade vanan att skjuta allt till morgondagen. Dock bättrades han på sitt yttersta och dog verkligen den 31 jan 1972"
  (Here beneath rest the ashes of a man who was in habit of always postponing everything till the day after. However, at last he improved and really died Jan 31 1972)


• Thomas O. Murphy
  Sh-h-h
  


• Elizabeth Rich
  36-33-01-24-17
  Honey you dont know what you did for me,
  always playing the lottery.
  The numbers you picked came in to play,
  two days after you passed away.
  For this, a huge monument I do erect,
  for now I get a yearly check.
  How I wish you were alive,
  for now we are worth 8.5


• Conrad Aiken
  Cosmos Mariner, Destination Unknown


• Edward Elliot
  Sacred
  To the memory of
  Everett Edward
  Elliot
  Of the heroic crew
  S.S. "Titantic" Died on duty
  April 15, 1912
  Age 24 years
  
  Each man stood at his post
  While all the weaker ones
  Went by, and showed once
  More to all the world
  How Englishmen should die.
  


• Joshua Norton
  NORTON I
  Emperor of the United States
  and Protector of Mexico


• William Jackson
  who Was carelessly rode over
  And Killed returning from the
  Races May 21st 1831 Aged 21 Years
  
  O Henecy you did me Kill
  And would not Pay my Dockters Bill

Every now and then I hear someone say, "Make big decisions in a cemetery."
It stands to reason. If the dead could laugh, they would laugh at the worries of the living. If I had to choose my epitaph now, I think it would say, "Why worry about it?"