BS: What do you want on your gravestone?

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: open mike
Date: 30 Nov 04 - 11:39 PM

IF YOU DO WANT TO DONATE YOUR BODY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE
you need to make prepartaions well before the time.
find the nearest medical facility and find out whqat
their policy is. My parents donated thier bodies and
it was a great feeling to know they were able to help
future medical students.
Some have restrictions on travel time, transportation,
etc. and the people around need to know what arrangements
have been made .

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Nov 04 - 11:57 PM

Justa Picker - you're warped!

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Justa Picker
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 12:56 AM

Nice of you to notice. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: chris nightbird childs
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 12:58 AM

"Let yr spirit burn, 'n they'll still smell the smoke when yr gone"

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 02:48 AM

Good night, Gracie.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 03:47 AM

I've made arrangements to leave my body to medical science (U.MD) but if I did have a headstone, I'd like "Dig me up quick! I'm not dead." Or: "Seamus Kennedy, the World's Greatest Hide-And-Seek Player."
Or:" Seamus Kennedy - died of Narcolepsy. Oh shit! Wait! Dig! Dig!"

Seamus

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Crystal
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 04:35 AM

Hmmm.
I'd have a flat one with "Memorial dancefloor" on it.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 05:04 AM

On the whole I'd rather be in Philadelphia. [ WC Fields ]


eric

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 05:18 AM

I always liked the Derek brimstone line:-
If I should die, think only this of me
In some corner of a foreign field lies...
a plagiarist.

Its a depressing thought alright, a lovely sunny morning like today and the party goes on without us - no one much noticing that we've checked out, and won't be coming back. Like Keats said, here lies one whose name was writ in water....

Like a lot of people here I've left instuctions, I don't want any kind of funeral. People have a chance to say nice things about you when you're alive. that's when it counts.

someone once wrote that Dickens wept over Thackeray's grave, but when they were both alive the and competing with each other, the boxing gloves were off.......an unpleasant side to us a species!

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 06:11 AM

So why exactly are you asking this, huh? Do you know something I don't know? Huh? Huh?

I have no intention of being buried. I want my body to be eaten by my friends.

If they refuse, I'll let the medics have me.

Anyone want to sign up now for my brain? It's been only lightly used, and should be quite tasty with a little marinara sauce.

;-D

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: kendall
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 06:11 AM

I KNEW IF I LIVED LONG ENOUGH THIS WOULD HAPPEN

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: muppett
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 07:01 AM

Beneath this sod lies another

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: JennyO
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 07:41 AM

All this talk of dying and gravestones reminded me of a poem - maybe a quote from it somewhere might be apt.

Reincarnation - Wallace McRae

What does reincarnation mean?"
A cowpoke asked his friend.
His pal replied, "It happens when
Yer life has reached its end.
They comb yer hair, and warsh yer neck,
And clean yer fingernails,
And lay you in a padded box                        
Away from life's travails.                

"The box and you goes in a hole,
that's been dug into the ground.
Reincarnation starts in when
Yore planted 'neath a mound.
Them clods melt down, just like yer box,
And you who is inside.
And then yore just beginnin' on
Yer transformation ride.

"In a while the grass'll grow
Upon yer rendered mound.
Till some day on yer moldered grave
A lonely flower is found.
And say a hoss should wander by
And graze upon this flower
That once wuz you, but now's become
Yer vegetative bower.

"The posey that the hoss done ate
Up, with his other feed,
Makes bone, and fat, and muscle
Essential to the steed.
But some is left that he can't use
And so it passes through,
And finally lays upon the ground.
This thing, that once wuz you.

"Then say, by chance, I wanders by
And sees this upon the ground,
And I ponders, and I wonders at,
This object that I found.
I thinks of reincarnation,
Of life, and death, and such,
And come away concludin': Slim,
You ain't changed all that much."

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 09:13 AM

JennyO -- a friend of ours does that recitation at our sessions occasionally. Love it!

Since I can't dispose of my body by slow oxidation in the treetops (I'm afraid of height, anyway), I'm also opting for cremation and scattering. But since I've spent so much of my life studying New England slate gravestones, I really want one as a marker. I'll probably carve it myself if I can't get one of my favorite (living) carvers to do it. Haven't a clue as to what I want on it, though.

Best line I've run into in my meanderings through old graveyards is on the markers for TWO different women in York, Maine -- "She lived desired and died lamented." Probably can't get much better than that!

Linn (the thanatolithologist)

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 09:27 AM

Speaking of old gravestone markers, here's one from my local cemetary which always catches my eye in my regular rambles:

"He Had a Love Affair With Death"

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 11:04 AM

He died first:

"Stranger, note as you pass by
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, so will you be
Prepare for Death and follow me."

And his good friend, next to whom he'd purchased his grave and with whom he'd had a falling out just before he died, passed away and had this as his epitath:

"To follow you I'm not content
For I know not which way you went."


Why not buy a large field somewhere, a sunny field bordered by mountains and the seashore, and turn it into the Mudcat Memorial Field? Graves and gravestones, scatterings, a mausoleum (you want it, you build it), a couple of pubs, picnic tables, gardens, nooks for private moments alone or with others, places to place and sing -- British Columbia, Washington, or Oregon come to mind as places that might have such a place available.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Flash Company
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 11:18 AM

How about:-

I'm a Celebrity, get me out of here!

FC

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 11:22 AM

"Just another dead fucker"

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Megan L
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 02:00 PM

My aunt has "you love me best who are happy for me"

some old ones
Here lies the father of 49 he would have had more but he didnt have time.

Here lies Ann Mann she lived and old maid and died an old mann.

here we lie back to back my wife and I and when the final trump shall trill if she gets up then i'll lie still.

Mine "so thats what that button did"

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: akenaton
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 03:54 PM

"I have no connection to Huntington Life Scieces"

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: beadie
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 04:19 PM

I'm rather partial to the epitaph that Peter O'Toole claims to have appropriated from a note sent to him by his dry-cleaner, . . .

    "it distresses us to return a piece of work uncompleted."



Personally, I'll be cremated, . . . I don't want to unnecessarily take up good fairway.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 05:55 PM

Ship your ashes to me, beadie, and I'll sprinkle them on the 2nd fairway of the Highland Golf Course -- actually, I'll just dump them over my back fence and you'll be in the rough, but what the hell -- most of the golfers around here seem to spend an eternity there.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: harpgirl
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 06:14 PM

WAIT!!! I have to tune my autoharp first!

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Big Mick
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 06:24 PM

"Look, he's moving"

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 07:12 PM

What do I want on my gravestone? Chutney. Or maybe some good salsa. I never eat gravestones without something spicey on them. If there's anything more bland tasting than a gravestone, I don't know what it is.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Chris Green
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 07:15 PM

After having seen "The Vanishing" how about "Dig! Now please!"

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 07:23 PM

This is an outrage! Don't you know who I am?

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Snuffy
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 07:48 PM

I like the one for the village postmistress:

Here lies Martha Jones, spinster and
For forty years postmistress

returned unopened

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Joe_F
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 10:07 PM

George Orwell said that if he were a woman, he would like

Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat conveyed,
Lest Charon, seeing, should forget
That he is old and she a shade.

He said it would almost be worth being dead to have that written about you. I feel the same about this one from Mencken's Quotations:

Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend, and persuaded his enemy; what his mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his servants robbed, he restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in pain: he never forgot his children: and whoso touched his finger, drew after it his whole body.

Mencken also quotes the following by Byron:

Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lies the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveler, -------.

There is also something to be said for the end of a famous poem by Goethe:

Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

Be patient: soon you will rest too.

In the real world, tho, I expect to follow my mother to the Boston University School of Medicine.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Peace
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 10:37 PM

Count Dracula

1236-
1458-
1527-
1703-
1823-
1995-

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: mg
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 11:51 PM

stop right where you are and say a prayer to get me out of purgatory. mg

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 02 Dec 04 - 04:41 PM

A number of years ago (I've got the clipping somewhere in my files), a pub was selling final resting places in the brick wall of the pub and under the brick floor.

Jay Smith still owned The Press Room at the time, and I suggested the idea to him. I wanted the spot behind the painting above the bar or maybe a plaque under my favorite bar stool (even though I spend most of my Press Room time holding down a chair in the session/singaround corner).

I know I'd like to have all that conviviality and music around my final resting place.

There's a guy in Boston who has a grave warming ceremony every year. He has a piper lead the parade to the cemetery, then he lies down on his plot for a few minutes, and then everyone retires to the local pub for a pint.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: GUEST,Chongo Chimp
Date: 02 Dec 04 - 04:57 PM

Well, I got a few ideas on this...

How about: "What are YOU lookin' at???"

Or: "On Vacation till further notice"

Or a button. A red button. No explanation. When the person pushes the button a panel opens in the gravestone and a fake tommygun pops out and blasts 'em with blank cartridges!!! Then my voice says, "Oh! Sorry about that... I thought it was the North Side gorillas comin' to collect."

I wanta be buried as close to King Kong as I can manage, but I ain't goin' till I'm good and ready!

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Pogo
Date: 02 Dec 04 - 09:17 PM

I would have a gravstone laid on the ground

On one side it would have " Please Turn Me Over "

And the other side would have " Thanks...I needed that "

{O)

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: GUEST,Paul Burke
Date: 03 Dec 04 - 04:47 AM

This is widely runoured to be authentic:

Here lies the bones of Elizabeth Moore
Born a virgin, died a whore.
She was aye a virgin at seventeen
A remarkable thing in Aberdeen.

But I want:

He never realised that it's never too late
until it was too late

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Tannywheeler
Date: 03 Dec 04 - 02:43 PM

I intend to be cremated, after they've taken anything healthy enough to be useful to anyone else. If there's any kind of a memorial that my family puts up it should read:
   "Throughout eternity to thee
    A joyful song I'll raise;
    But, oh -- ETERNITY'S TOO SHORT
    To utter all thy praise."
This is the last verse of a poem by Addison (remember paradox in high school Eng. Lit. class?) the whole of which is a hymn in the Episcopal Hymnal(1940 & '82). One of my favorites.    Tw

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Cluin
Date: 03 Dec 04 - 03:37 PM

"I've got Oreos down here..."

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: beadie
Date: 03 Dec 04 - 04:21 PM

Thanks for the offer, Rapaire.    I'll tell the Missus that she won't have to dust my urn every week.

. . . I'd much rather fertilise the fairway (or the rough) than occupy a six by three foot chunk of it with an obstacle in the form of a gravestone impeding the ball's trajectory to the pin.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: GUEST,stevi
Date: 03 Dec 04 - 05:32 PM

they say that when yer go yer cant take it with you ! if its not their when ive gone ime coming back!

stevi

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Cluin
Date: 05 Dec 04 - 01:48 AM

Being dead sucks

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 05 Dec 04 - 03:55 AM

I don't know about anybody else but I'm finding this current crop of macabre postings and intimations of mortality......well a little unnerving. On blokes on about what to do with his instruments when he's dead , and this one.

Come back sir jOhn with his dead cats, etc

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Dec 04 - 10:40 AM

Cliun - How do you know that for sure?

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: GUEST,Cluin
Date: 05 Dec 04 - 02:37 PM

Coz it'll be on the gravestone.

Y'know, written in stone an' all that?

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Peace
Date: 05 Dec 04 - 07:33 PM

Get it written using the futhorc alphabet and really screw 'em up. (And put the birth/death dates to 1,200 years ago.) Drive someone nuts after you're gone.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Dec 04 - 08:01 PM

Oh, I see... :-)

I've been thinking of putting a photo of Martin Gibson on my gravestone, so as to scare away potential grave-robbers. (Not that there'd be any point robbing my grave...)

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: GUEST,Kendall
Date: 06 Dec 04 - 08:11 AM

I knew if I lived long enough something like this would happen

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: mooman
Date: 06 Dec 04 - 08:16 AM

"Impermanence" or just plain blank will do me fine.

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Amos
Date: 06 Dec 04 - 08:40 AM

Anonymous Guest

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 07 Dec 04 - 01:36 AM

HE KNEW WHAT FOLK MUSIC IS (and M.G. didn't!)

Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
From: Cluin
Date: 07 Dec 04 - 01:58 AM

On a grave in the East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:
Here lies
Ezekial Aikle
Age 102
The Good
Die Young.

In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:
Anna Wallace
The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna,
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.

A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:
Sacred to the memory of
my husband John Barnes
who died January 3, 1803
His comely young widow, aged 23, has
many qualifications of a good wife, and
yearns to be comforted.

Epitaph for a loving husband, by his widow:
Rest in peace - Until we meet again.

From Shropshire, England:
Here lies the body of Martha Elias
Always busy, but not very pious
She lived to the age of threescore and ten
And gave to the worms what she refused to men.

In Devon, England:
Here lie I, by the chancel door,
Here lie I, because I'm poor,               
The farther in, the more you pay,
Yet here lie I, as warm as they.

One from a graveyard in Sargentville, Maine:
Sacred to the memory of Elisha Philbrook and his wife
Beneath these stones do lie, back to back, my wife and I
When the last trumpet the air shall fill,
If she gets up, I'll just lie still.

From Kilmurry, Ireland:
This stone was raised by Sarah's lord,
Not Sarah's virtues to record,
For they're well known to all the town,
But it was raised to keep her down.

In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:
Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.

A lawyer's epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.

Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont:
I was somebody.
Who, is no business
Of yours.

Here lies the body of an atheist...
All dressed up and no place to go