Key West The Newspaper

by Kim Pederson…….

As you may know, November 2 is the Day of the Dead. As you may not know, it is also Plan Your Epitaph Day, at least according to Lance Hardie, author of the yet-to-be-published (I think) How to Write Your Own Epitaph — and Live Long Enough to Enjoy It. Lance believes that having a forgettable gravestone is a fate worse than death, and he exhorts his readers to avoid this at all costs: “Don’t give up your power over the most important words of your life. Take control: it’s your life, it’s your death, it’s your stone — YOU say something!”

To prompt you into action, Lance offers a few choice epitaph examples:

• “Here lies the body of Richard Hind, who was neither ingenious, sober, or kind.” [Hey, it’s your gravestone. If you want to have sloppy grammar, so be it. And see, Josiah?]
• “I made an ash of myself.”
• “I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”
• “Posterity will ne’er survey a nobler grave than this; Here lie the bones of Castlereagh: Stop, traveler, and piss.”

Reading Lance’s epitaph exhortation prompted me to wonder, for no particular reason other than I haven’t touched on anything political for a while, what our presidential candidates would have on their tombstones. Here’s what I think we would see:

• Carly Fiorina: Here lies Carly.
• Ben Carson: It’s about the twist and the shout and the ya ya ya and don’t ask me to explain.
• Chris Christie: Hey! I just came over for a visit. What a-hole closed the fricking bridge?
• Ted Cruz: I coulda been a con-Ted-der. I coulda been somebody. I coulda had class.
• Marco Rubio: Give it up, Ted.
• Rand Paul: I don’t know what this is but I’m sure someone spent too much taxpayer money on it.
• Bernie Sanders: Berned Out.
• Hillary Clinton: You know what? He did have sex with that woman.
• John Kasich: At last, an end to the BS.
• Bobby Jindal: Why am I here again?
• Lindsey Graham: I’m still ready to be Commander in Chief.
• Mike Huckabee: There’s been a horrible mistake. This escalator only goes down.
• Jeb Bush: Stuff happens.
• Donald Trump (buried next to Jeb): I told you he was low energy.

I haven’t given much thought to my own epitaph since I’m not planning to have a grave or a headstone. If I did, my last words would be kindred in spirit to this commemorative marker on a building in Key West: “On this spot on such and such date, nothing happened.”

*”008-Josiah Leavitt (d. Dec 19th, 1717) grave, Hingham Center Cemetery, Hingham, Plymouth Co., MA” by dee E. Warenycia, Roseville, CA via email from author. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.

Visit Kim Pederson’s blog RatBlurt: Mostly Random Short-Attention-Span Musings.