![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/IMG_6938.jpg\" "\\"In")
<\/a>A child's tombstone<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
For sure, the stories some epitaphs tell are sad.\u00a0 The most common is when the deceased’s dates are too close.\u00a0 What a tragedy, the death of a baby or child, hope snuffed out so soon.\u00a0 The sorrow still lingers as I read tombstones of infants or children, but it’s no longer immediate and wrenching, diminished by the years and decades.\u00a0 A recently died close relative’s headstone would obviously be different.\u00a0 Here’s another reason why being surrounded by these signs and words of death can be life affirming: it makes me all the more grateful for\u00a0my life right now.<\/p>\n
I enjoy older cemeteries more than newer ones.\u00a0 Today’s headstones don’t tell you much more than the name and dates of birth and death.\u00a0 Sometimes you get a title or a relationship (Colonel, Father, Wife) and if you’re lucky, you get an adjective (Dearest Mother, Beloved Husband).\u00a0 I wonder if engraving on a stone costs too much these days.\u00a0 I worry we aren’t so good at coming up with words, or maybe we see ourselves as not able to write creatively.\u00a0 That’s too bad.\u00a0 As you might guess, I think just the opposite.\u00a0 I think once a person, almost any person, sets a pen to paper (or chisel to stone)\u00a0and starts writing, something good and readable and creative will result.<\/p>\n
If I were an English teacher, junior high, high school or college, I would assign my students to go to a cemetery and copy a few epitaphs and use one as the basis for a story.\u00a0 The one above, for example, would make for a good tale.\u00a0 Here’s a woman who was\u00a0born in 1747 in the colonial period.\u00a0 She was married (by “consort” they meant\u00a0wife)\u00a0to someone who built ships.\u00a0 The dates show they lived through the American Revolution.\u00a0 Did he build ships for the colonies or for Britain?\u00a0 Were the two close (in the story I would tell about her they probably would be).\u00a0 What was his life like after his wife died, though we don’t know that he had already gone, do we?\u00a0 See what I mean? \u00a0 I think a person could spin quite a yarn with a few details like these as a starting point.<\/p>\n
I’m going to be\u00a0including epitaphs from my\u00a0collection in this blog over the coming weeks and months.\u00a0 I thought October was an apt month to start.\u00a0 I share them not only because I think they are interesting, but also as another example of how to add words to life, to live literarily.\u00a0 Word collections are easy, inexpensive and fun, something almost anybody could do with a notebook and a pen.\u00a0 Tomorrow I’ll share my favorite epitaph of all, truly fit for a story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Memory of Cordilia N(illegible) Consort of John (illegible), Ship Builder Who departed this life September, 21, 1810 in the 63rd year of her age (from a tombstone in a cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia) I have long loved walking through … Continue reading