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Epitaphs
A Sermon Given
by The Reverend Roger Fritts
on May 30, 1999
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
What is an epitaph? One wit defines it as "a memorial that usually
lies above, about the one that lies below." Whatever the truth of
this definition, epitaphs can be much more. The words on a grave
marker can be tools to help us live a better life.
I took a class in the Arts of Ministry when I was twenty-three
years old. The teacher said:
I want you to imagine that you have
only a few days to live. Your task is
to write your own epitaph. A stone
carver will inscribe these words on
your granite grave marker. In three
hundred years it will be the only
remaining record that you have ever
lived. What do you wish a carver to
put on your headstone?
I protested that I planned to have my ashes scattered over the state
of Arizona and therefore, I would not need an epitaph. The teacher
said:
Roger, I understand that thinking
about your own death is difficult, and
it is tempting to practice avoidance
by thinking up reasons not to do the
assignment. Nevertheless, if you want
to become an effective minister, you
needed to come to grips with your
own death. Do the assignment."
In the years since, reading epitaphs and understanding the past has
helped me achieve a better understanding of myself. The words
have help me comprehend who I am, where I have come from, and
what I am becoming. I find that reading the memorials to the dead
gives me perspective on my life. The epitaphs remind me of my
own limits. They remind me of the many things in common that I
hold with those who have gone before me. They remind me of the
progress we have made in civilization. When I see other people's
epitaphs, I remember that assignment to write my own. Other
peoples' carvings challenge me to think about how I might sum up
my life in one sentence.
The earliest surviving epitaphs are those of the ancient Egyptians,
followed by the ancient Greeks and later the Romans. The Romans
took the idea of epitaphs to England where the earliest are written
in Latin and contain only a simple statement of name and rank of
the person. However, by the end of the 16th century, the writing of
longer epitaphs became popular in England. English settlers carried
the practice to America where it flourished from the 17th century
until the end of the last century.
In searching for the best epitaph for Roger Fritts, I have grouped
existing inscriptions into several categories. One group is Bible
verses. Starting with Puritans and continuing to the present
time,
verses taken from the Bible are the most common American
epitaphs. Often these carvings promised salvation as a reward for
the pious. For example, on many grave markers we can see a
passage from the Gospel of John:
I am the resurrection and the life;
he that believeth in me,
though he were dead,
yet shall he live.
If you had to choose a Bible verse to be your epitaph what would
you choose? My own favorite parts of the Bible are "The Story of
the Good Samaritan" and the "Story of the Woman Taken in
Adultery." Both are a little long for a stone cutter to carve into
granite. If I had to go with a short Bible verse, I think I might
choose "Blessed are the peacemakers."
Not everyone has scripture on their grave marker. Early in the 19th
century people began to write inscriptions about eternal peace and
reunions in heaven. These remain popular today. They often take
the form of short prayers. The prayers ask God to show mercy in
dealing with the soul of the departed. Examples include "Eternal
rest grant unto them, O Lord," and "Our Lady of Perpetual Help,
pray for us." Other times these epitaphs are in the form of a poem.
For example:
The praise of those who sleep in earth
The pleasant memory of their worth,
The hope to meet when life is past,
Shall heal the tortured mind at last.
Over time the messages in the poetry expanded to include laments
about the problems of life. In Guilford, Vermont,
My life's been hard
And all things show it;
I always thought so
And now I know it.
In Chesterfield, New Hampshire,
I know the road was bright and fair
Or once it seemed to be.
But it has changed so much of late,
It has few Charms for me.
If you had to choose a short poem to be placed on your headstone,
what would you pick? Would you write your own poem?
Having suffered from dyslexia all my life, I am no poet. If required
to pick a poem as an epitaph, I might pick for myself two lines I
love from a poem by Carl Sandburg. He wrote:
There are dreams stronger than death.
Men and women die holding these dreams.
Another category of inscription are those chosen by family
members that express the grief over the loss of a loved one. They
are sentimental descriptions of personal pain carved in stone for the
ages to read. They give us hints about the man or woman who has
died and about the survivor who chose the epitaph. For example in
Media, Pennsylvania one man wrote a long epitaph in homage to
his wife. It reads in part:
[A] Tribute to a wonderful woman,
Kathryn. She was kind and gracious
to everyone and very intelligent.
I was privileged and honored to have
been associated with Kay for fifty years.
Her loving husband.
Some inscriptions about spouses are not as loving. In a Vermont
grave yard are these words:
She lived with her husband fifty years
and died in the confident hope of a better life.
These examples invite us to ask our spouses, or our children, or
our friends, "If you had to write an epitaph for us what would you
say?" They might choose to
describe the manner of our death.
This is another common category of epitaph. For example, in a
Burlington, Massachusetts churchyard are these words:
Here lies the body of Mary Ann Lowder;
She burst whilst drinking a Seidlitz powder;
Called from this world to her heavenly rest,
She should have waited till it effervesced.
Or in a churchyard in Pembrokeshire, England:
Here lie I, and no wonder I am dead,
For the wheel of a wagon went over my head.
Or in Oxford, New Hampshire:
To all my friends I bid adieu;
A more sudden death you never knew:
As I was leading the old mare to drink,
She kicked and killed me quicker'n a wink.
If this style appeals to you, you can request in your will that your
epitaph be a short poetic description of how you died.
Still another category of epitaphs are those on the graves of
famous people. For example, William Shakespeare was worried
that someone might take his bones.
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here;
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
The poet William Butler Yeats wrote his own epitaph in one of his
poems:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
Up the road in Rockville the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald has a
quotation from The Great Gatsby on his grave:
So we beat on boats against the current,
Borne back ceaselessly into the past.
The writer Dorothy Parker's ashes rest beneath the pines of the
NAACP headquarters in Baltimore. On a marker appears the
epitaph she suggested. The three words she chose were:
Excuse my dust.
And W.C. Fields' epitaph actually says:
On the whole, I would rather be in Philadelphia.
If the inscriptions of famous people do not help us in writing our
own epitaphs, there are still other categories to consider. Another
type of epitaph is the one that
carries on an argument.
In 1874
Joseph Coveney had built in the Buchanan, Michigan cemetery a
massive Victorian monument bearing his name and covered with
inscriptions such as:
He died as he had lived,
a disbeliever in the Bible and the Christian religion,
The more priests, the more poverty,
Nature is the true God,
science is the true religion,
The more religion the more lying.
Although some have tried to have it removed, the monument still
stands proclaiming to those who pass by the fiercely held beliefs
of the Joseph Coveney.
Many inscriptions are a play on words.
In 1974 a man in West
Virginia asked his family to cremate his remains after his death.
Referring to the cremation, he left instructions that his epitaph
should say:
I made an ash of myself.
Others word-plays are based on the occupation of the
deceased.
An inscription commonly found on ancient Roman graves is "may
the earth lie light upon thee." Three hundred years ago a satirical
version of this Roman saying was placed on the grave of an
English architect:
Lie heavy on him, earth!
For he laid many heavy loads on thee.
Benjamin Franklin's epitaph plays on his trade as a printer, hoping
that he will,
Appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition,
Corrected and amended by the author.
If a coal miner's epitaph is "Gone Underground for Good" and a
gardener's epitaph is "Transplanted," what is an appropriate epitaph
for a Unitarian Universalist minister? Perhaps it should say on my
headstone:
Gone in search of a discussion about Heaven.
Whatever we decide for the words that sum up our life, we should
be careful to have it proofread
before the stone carving begins. If
we do not, we could end with an epitaph like the one created by
the friends of a man named John McFarlane:
Erected to the memory of
John MacFarlane
Drowned in the Water of Leith
By a few affectionate friends.
The popularity of the epitaph faded during the 20th century.
Gravestone carving costs increased. A charge per letter became
common, making the cost of long inscriptions prohibitive for many.
Cemetery administrations placed tighter restrictions about what is
and is not acceptable to place on a headstone. These reasons and
others have resulted in a decrease in the number of epitaphs.
Because of this change in custom, it is unlikely that I will ever
have an epitaph. Nevertheless, trying to sum up my life in one
sentence remains a good discipline. When I was first asked to write
my own epitaph, back when I was 23, I took a week to think it
over. Finally, I told the teacher and my classmates that I liked a
line from a passage by the poet e.e. cummings. Cummings wrote:
Always the more beautiful answer
who asks a more beautiful question.
When the teacher asked me to explain why I chose these words, I
said that they encouraged me not to hold back, not to be shy, but
to risk love and friendship, to risk living fully, so that when I die,
whenever that is, I will not be filled with regret about not having
lived.
I invite you to join me in this exercise. The next time you visit a
cemetery, look at the grave markers. Try to move beyond denial
and face your personal mortality. Ask yourself: How do you want
to use the time that you have? What is most important to you?
Visualize the carved stone and ask yourself: How would you sum
up your life in a few words? How should others remember you?
I invite you to write your own epitaph. Perhaps you will find as I
have, that in going through this exercise you will learn to live your
life more fully.
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