The fifth part of an ongoing series
By Andrew Hoffman
Hello all, I welcome you to an ongoing series on a lighter aspect of death: the epitaph. An epitaph is defined as an inscription on a tombstone, written in memory of a person who has died. The words we choose for our gravestone say a lot about how we lived our life.
I’ve highlighted some creative, eccentric and funny engravings.
Some epitaphs are extremely funny; one such case is on the tombstone of B. P. Roberts in Key West, Florida, who died in 1970 at the age of 50. She was a well-known hypochondriac and was often teased about her various imaginary ailments. Before she died, she said, “I told you I was sick!” That phrase was placed on her tombstone by her family. This actually has become a very common epitaph with minor alterations. In 2002, the comedian Spike Milligan was buried at St. Thomas Church in Winchelsea, East Sussex. Initially the Chichester diocese refused to allow his desired epitaph, but a compromise was reached with the Irish translation of “I told you I was ill.”
Some of the funniest entertainers have demonstrated that their sense of humor continues even after their demise. Comedian Rodney Dangerfield (1921-2004) is famous for his stand-up comedy and his hilarious roles in “Caddyshack” and “Back to School”, especially his self-deprecating humor. On his tombstone he arranged for his epitaph to be “There goes the neighborhood”. Another comedian and actor Leslie Nielsen, most famous for his roles in “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun” films, had a penchant for fart jokes. So much so, he vowed he would take that type of humor to the grave, and he did literally with the epitaph “Let ‘er rip”.
Frances Eileen Thatcher of Dane County, Oregon Wisconsin passed away at the age of 61 after a courageous battle with cancer. You could tell reading her obituary that she was a kind and active person, but they failed to mention her sense of humor as on the back of her monument has the epitaph “Damn its dark down here”. Dr Edward Russell Gann died in 1983 in Sigourney, Iowa. His wife and son had inscribed on the tombstone, “I‘d rather be in Acapulco!” I can understand those sentiments.
John Denby and his son Maurice were both dentists, and when John passed away in 1927 his tombstone was engraved with the phrase “I’m filling my last cavity”. When his son Maurice entered into rest in 1964, “Me too” was added to the family stone. In a cemetery in Ruidoso, New Mexico there is the tombstone of John Yeast (who likely would have loved to change his name due to all the “bread puns”) because he arranged for the pun “Here lies John Yeast. Pardon me for not rising” to be placed as his epitaph.
Stay tuned to my next article as we go deeper into art of the epitaph and highlight a few more.
Andrew B. Hoffman is a funeral director at Jeffries and Keates and Keates-Plum Funeral Homes. He is a twenty-two year veteran of the funeral industry.
