Headstoned

One of the drawbacks of growing older is finding yourself in graveyards more and more often. This, of course, beats the alternative of finding yourself in a graveyard permanently, but still… it’s not a terribly pleasant part of the aging process to visit increasing numbers of your all-time favorite people in such places.

If these visits weren’t bad enough, there’s now something else that makes them even more unpleasant:

The appalling trends in modern headstone design.

These things are atrocious. What once were simple markers of the last mortal remains of our fellow human beings have been transformed into mind-boggling orgies of poor taste: gaudy displays of tackiness shaped like teardrops, hearts, books, flames, angels holding hearts, mountains, wings and animated ogres. Think I’m kidding?

But it's not just the shape that's changed. It used to be that the copy on a headstone was limited to the name and lifespan of the deceased. But this has tragically morphed into a verbose screed that features several lamentations and a list of unofficial titles that all start with the word “beloved:” Son, dad, cousin, brother, nephew, uncle, neighbor, hunting partner, business associate, tipper, drinking buddy…

They read less like headstones and more like resumes for passage into heaven.

“Says here on your stone you were a square dancer and avid fisherman who was beloved by everyone. No kidding, everyone? Dang. You’re in.”

In fact, according to modern headstones, everyone who’s died this year was a humanitarian who would have put Mother Theresa to shame. Just once, I’d like to come across a stone that indicates the interred was a miserable bastard. Or a grump. Or a lazy, cheap-beer-swilling, do-nothing, two-timing louse whose lone contribution to the betterment of this world was the departing of it. But I guess if that were true, they’d just list his name and lifespan.

Worse than the verbose headstones are the ones that take advantage of the latest visual reproduction technology. 

These are stones that feature a laser-engraved collage of what the deceased enjoyed in life, such as ocean scenes, motorcycles, fishing ponds, airplanes, and even tree stands for deer hunting. You can just imagine a nightly herd of deer laughing at that. “You don’t look so bad now, do you Mister Buckmaster.”

Yet another trend is to include actual photographs of the dearly departed, presumably to let future generations know where their ugly gene came from.

Frankly, I don’t want someone a hundred years from now knowing what I looked like. I want them to see my headstone and think, “That there was the handsomest sonofabitch that ever lived.” Which is why my stone will look like this:

Handsomest AND happiest.