I drive past a very old cemetery on the way to work each day. As a child we used to run through this cemetery at night and be so scared! I see row after row of tombstones and think to myself...you'll be there some day. All of us will. Some of us are comforted by religious faith and a belief in an afterlife, while others believe we have to make the most of our time here. Either way, we end up at a place like this or we have our ashes scattered to the winds. Each of those tombstones has a story behind it. Buried beneath them is someone's father or mother, a husband or wife, a son or daughter.

Many of the tombstones simply have a name, date of birth, and the day the person died. Sometimes "loving husband and father" or other such sentiments will be there. Others are even more descriptive. (Check here and here for famous epitaphs.

What would I want on my tombstone? I do kinda like Wyatt Earp's: that nothing's so sacred as honor and nothing's so loyal as love. I also like Robert Frost's: I had A Lover's Quarrel With The World. But mine has to be orginal of course.

But Brian, you say, its morbid to think about things like this! Why would you even think about death? Why talk about your tombstone? What does it matter now? Hopefully I have a lot of good years left in this world. But somehow it seems like pondering your death can lead you to think about how you want to live. And who knows when our gig is up?



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