Grave Tombstone Quotes

I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, everything should just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment'.

When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice—twice—we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner—everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn't there.

The Garden of Love I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

My life will end someday, but it will end at my convenience.

Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colourful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles... no matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, even in Hitler's time, even in Stalin's time..

She could just imagine, all her friends and family mourning around her grave. The tombstone would read Kari Wagner, Died of Sheer Stupidity. It would be almost as bad to have her grave marker read Died of Terminal Bedroom Boredom.

The tombstone over the grave of the conscience always reads: "Human Nature".

I'm a good girl. I'm a nice girl. I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and brother's shit and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died,after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father ever day on the telephone -- every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a big muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "Such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.

That there’s Henrietta’s mother,” he said, pointing to a lone tombstone near the cemetery’s edge, surrounded by trees and wild roses. It was several feet tall, its front worn rough and browned from age and weather.

It was a lovely grave—simple, clean—and on the stone was written: Sam Cortland Beloved Arobynn had left it blank—unmarked. But Wesley had explained in his letter how he’d asked the tombstone carver to come. She approached the grave, reading it over and over. Beloved—not just by her, but by many. Sam. Her Sam.

What would you rather have?" "Cheeseburger and a small fry. Coke classic. Better yet, dope classic." "Sure. I'll take a milkshake. What's the special flavor this week, chocolate Jack Daniels?" "Strawberry scotch." "Stick one of those paper umbrellas in mine." "Shove a syringe in mine. And a plastic tombstone. RIP, baby. He was born a rock star. He died a junkie." "Rock in peace." [...] "He wanted the world and lost his soul. [...] Sold it all for rock and roll. Lost his heart in a needle. Found his life in the grave. The road to hell is paved in marijuana leaves. Now he rocks in peace.

Your kids—and I imagine they had more help—dug a wide but shallow grave on Weston’s football field. They stole the kid’s car, drove it into the hole, and buried it. They even made a nice little tombstone for it.” Snorts

Some people die and you realize that the only mark they left on earth are the tomb stones under which they lie. The impacts you make on earth should be something worthy to improve lives.

I missed you, Kitten,” he growled. Then his mouth crushed over mine, his kiss more filled with raw need than romantic welcome. That was fine; I felt the same way. Aside from my compulsive urge to run my hands over him to assure myself that he was really here, relief, happiness, and the most profound feeling of rightness zoomed through me, settling all the way to my core. I hadn’t realized how deeply I’d missed Bones until that very moment, hadn’t let myself acknowledge how everything felt off when I was apart from him. On some levels, it was frightening how much a part of me he’d become. It let me know just how much I’d crumble if anything happened to him. “Why didn’t you answer your mobile earlier?” Bones murmured once he lifted his head. “I tried you several times. Tried Mencheres, too. Even Tepesh. None of you answered. Scared the wits out of me, so I stowed away on a FedEx plane to make sure you were all right.” “You came all the way from Ohio because I didn’t answer the phone?” I was torn between laughter and disbelief. “God, Bones, that’s a little crazy.” And it was, except the part of me that had had images of his tombstone dancing in my head because he hadn’t answered his phone earlier was nodding in complete understanding. Despite all our protestations, we were so alike when it came to fear over the other’s safety, and I doubted we’d ever change. “Crazy,” I repeated, my voice roughening with the surge of emotion in me. “And have I told you lately. that your crazy side . . . is your sexiest side?” He chuckled before his mouth swooped back over mine in another dizzying kiss. Then he picked me up, brushing past Vlad and Mencheres without even a hello, though I doubted either of them was surprised.

One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody's in the same case. Some folks haven't the courage to say certain things, that's all! THE STEP-DAUGHTER: All appear to have the courage to do them though.

I don’t know whether it is that I am built wrong, but I never did seem to hanker after tombstones myself. I know that the proper thing to do, when you get to a village or town, is to rush off to the churchyard, and enjoy the graves; but it is a recreation that I always deny myself. I take no interest in creeping round dim and chilly churches behind wheezy old men, and reading epitaphs. Not even the sight of a bit of cracked brass let into a stone affords me what I call real happiness.

Movie directors often shoot funerals in the rain. The mourners stand in their dark suits under large black umbrellas, the kind you never have handy in real life, while the rain falls symbolically all around them, on grass and tombstones and the roods of cars, generating atmostphere. What they don't show you is how the legs of your suit caked with grass clippings, cling soaked to your shins, how even under umbrellas the rain still manages to find your scalp, running down your skull and past your collar like wet slugs, so that while you're supposed to be meditating on the deceased, instead you're mentally tracking the trickle of water as it slides down your back. The movies don't convey how the soaked, muddy ground will swallow up the dress shoes of the pallbearers like quicksand, how the water, seeping into the pine coffin, will release the smell of death and decay, how the large mound of dirt meant to fill the grave will be transformed into an oozing pile of sludge that will splater with each stab of the shovel and land on the coffin with an audible splat. And instead of a slow and dignified farewell, everyone just wants to get the deceased into the ground and get the hell back into their cars.

At one time, the state of culture in Czechoslovakia was described, rather poignantly, as a 'Biafra of the spirit'. . . I simply do not believe that we have all lain down and died. I see far more than graves and tombstones around me. I see evidence of this in . . . expensive books on astronomy printed in a hundred thousand copies (they would hardly find that many readers in the USA) . . .

As inscribed on John Keats' tombstone: This Grave contains all that was Mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, Who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart, at the Malicious Power of his Enemies Desired these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone: "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water." Feb 24 1821

How angry am I? You don't want to know. Nobody wants to know about that. I'm a good girl, I'm a nice girl, I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and my brother's shit, and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died, after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father every day on the telephone -- every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a bit muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.

I gabbed Ivy's arm. "Look. Ivy. Something just moved - by that tombstone." We both stared into the gray light. "Oh, noooo," I moaned. I watched, trembling in horror as someone climbed out of a grave.

My mother’s family is passionate about visiting and cleaning the graves of their deceased. Once a year, the Peeks and the Nolens would gather to clean the tombstones and plant flowers at the grave sites of their people. Once, in Piedmont, when I was a little boy, I was helping to clean a grave of an ancestor of my grandfather named Jerry Mire Peek. When I asked my cousin Clyde whom this unknown relation was named after, he said, “He was named after the prophet Jerry Mire.

You are a cool cemetery. You have the sinner’s grave You have the saint’s earth colliding You have all the beds narrow as a knife; as if a rally of tombstones to defend death. But you can’t really postpone the inauguration of my burial, can you? From the poem - Few Words to Cemetery

Façade. One, simple word. But, very complex portents. It’s like living a life of half-dead. You are neither fully inside a grave, nor completely out of it, beyond the oppressive calmness of the slabs, tombstones and plaques. There is one solace though, you soon discover that you are not alone in the vast graveyard of the half-dead. This is what Kamini soon realized when she plunged herself back into the world that the destiny had conspired her to inherit.

We buried him high on a windy hill, But his soul went out to sea. I know, for I heard, when all was still, His sea-soul say to me: Put no tombstone at my head, For here I do not make my bed. Strew no flowers on my grave, I’ve gone back to the wind and wave. Do not, do not weep for me, For I am happy with my sea.

The biographer is now faced with a difficulty which it is better perhaps to confess than to gloss over. Up to this point in telling the story of Orlando's life, documents, both private and historical, have made it possible to fulfil the first duty of the biographer, which is to plod, without looking to right or left, in the indelible footprints of truth; unenticed by flowers; regardless of shade; on and on methodically till we fall plump in the grave and write finis on the tombstone above our heads.

A few graves in the cemetery were marked with crumbling tombstones; newer ones were outlined with brightly colored glass and broken Coca-Cola bottles

Accidentally Shot As a mark of affection by his brother.

Now I am dead and laid in my grave And that my bones are rotten, By this shall I remembered be, Or else I am forgotten.

Let my grave be forgotten. Give me your word of honour that you will allow no monument of any sort — not even the commonest tombstone — to mark the place of my burial. Let me sleep, nameless. Let me rest, unknown.

It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.

Look around the forests where Washington’s sword once gleamed, and what do you find? Tombstones? No: a world! Washington left the United States as a trophy on his battleground. Bonaparte has nothing in common with this serious American.

So I turned to the Garden of Love That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tombstones where flowers should be; And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys and desires.

A model of probity, a steady hand to reassure the grieving, a sober man—a grave man—solid as the pillar of a tomb. A good dose of gangster to the hat to let you know the councilman played his politics old-school, with a shovel in the dark of the moon. Plus that touch of Tombstone, of Gothic western undertaker, like maybe sometimes when the moon was full and Flowers & Sons stood empty and dark but for the vigil lights, Chan Flowers might up and straddle a coffin, ride it like a bronco.

His oldest child from his second marriage, Matthew, stayed up all the night before he was buried, putting his father’s history on a wooden tombstone. He began with his father’s name on the first line, and on the next, he put the years ofhis father’s coming and going. Then all the things he knew his father had been. Husband. Father. Farmer. Grandfather. Patroller. Tobacco Man. Tree Maker. The letters ofthe words got smaller and smaller as the boy, not quite twelve, neared the bottom ofthe wood because he had never made a headstone for anyone before so he had not compensated for all that he would have to put on it. The boy filled up the whole piece ofwood and at the end of the last line he put a period. His father’s grave would remain, but the wooden marker would not last out the year. The boy knew better than to put a period at the end ofsuch a sentence. Something that was not even a true and proper sentence, with subject aplenty, but no verb to pull it all together. A sentence, Matthew’s teacher back in Virginia had tried to drum into his thick Kinsey head, could live without a subject, but it could not live without a verb.

I got kicked out of my first home for poking a wire hanger into an electrical outlet. My foster mom caught me, shrieked, and called the DCFS to come cart me away, because I was clearly suicidal and no one had told her that I was a child with ‘special needs.’” “Were you? Suicidal?” “I was five.” “Still.” “No, I wasn’t trying to off myself. I was curious. Little kids spend half their waking hours being warned not to do things. Don’t run with scissors. Don’t lick a flagpole in winter. Don’t stick anything into electrical outlets. Those three little holes looked so mysterious. I had to know if they were as dangerous as everyone said.” “What happened?” A smile curled the corner of Conn’s mouth, indicating he’d already guessed the answer—which wasn’t exactly hard, given that I was standing right there in front of him, and not buried in an early grave with the tombstone Here Lies Darcy Jones, electrocuted orphan.

A narrow grave-yard in the heart of a bustling, indifferent city, seen from the windows of a gloomy-looking inn, is at no time an object of enlivening suggestion; and the spectacle is not at its best when the mouldy tombstones and funereal umbrage have received the ineffectual refreshment of a dull, moist snow-fall.

Desiree the child bride, and her sister Miranda, had gone grave-robbing for a wedding gown. In the north end of the cemetery, among the palatial mausoleums with their broken windows of stained glass where the ivy crept in, was the resting place of a young woman who’d been murdered at the altar while reciting her marital vows. The decaying tombstone, among the cemetery’s most envied, was a limestone bride in despair, shoulders as slumped as a mule’s, a bouquet of lilies strewn at her feet. Though her murder, by her groom’s jealous mother, had been long in the past, everyone knew that her father had had her buried in her gown of lace and silk.

There was never any doubt that the local jury would return a guilty verdict. “In due time, gentlemen of the jury,” Seward concluded, “when I shall have paid the debt of nature, my remains will rest here in your midst, with those of my kindred and neighbors. It is very possible they may be unhonored, neglected, spurned! But, perhaps years hence, when the passion and excitement which now agitate this community shall have passed away, some wandering stranger, some lone exile, some Indian, some negro, may erect over them a humble stone, and thereon this epitaph, ‘He was Faithful!’ ” More than a century afterward, visitors to Seward’s grave at the Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn would find those very words engraved on his tombstone.

You could spend hours following the trail of a single dispute, through smoking battlefields of interlinked comments threads and screen shots and blogs where the message “this post has been deleted by its author” stands like a tombstone over the grave of the one witness who can tell you what really happened. I know, because I’ve wandered extensively over this blasted heath in the past couple of weeks.

Church bells toll on the air, slow and sad. I scan the sloping lawn, cluttered with tombstones, trying to spot the Raven. Mist is twining through the graves, and the light is slipping low, and I can't see her from here. I can't see her---but I know she's there. I can feel the pull of my missing thread, as if its end were still embedded in my chest. I am a compass, and the Raven in Red is my new torch.

The plane banked, and he pressed his face against the cold window. The ocean tilted up to meet him, its dark surface studded with points of light that looked like constellations, fallen stars. The tourist sitting next to him asked him what they were. Nathan explained that the bright lights marked the boundaries of the ocean cemeteries. The lights that were fainter were memory buoys. They were the equivalent of tombstones on land: they marked the actual graves. While he was talking he noticed scratch-marks on the water, hundreds of white gashes, and suddenly the captain's voice, crackling over the intercom, interrupted him. The ships they could see on the right side of the aircraft were returning from a rehearsal for the service of remembrance that was held on the ocean every year. Towards the end of the week, in case they hadn't realised, a unique festival was due to take place in Moon Beach. It was known as the Day of the Dead... ...When he was young, it had been one of the days he most looked forward to. Yvonne would come and stay, and she'd always bring a fish with her, a huge fish freshly caught on the ocean, and she'd gut it on the kitchen table. Fish should be eaten, she'd said, because fish were the guardians of the soul, and she was so powerful in her belief that nobody dared to disagree. He remembered how the fish lay gaping on its bed of newspaper, the flesh dark-red and subtly ribbed where it was split in half, and Yvonne with her sleeves rolled back and her wrists dipped in blood that smelt of tin. It was a day that abounded in peculiar traditions. Pass any candy store in the city and there'd be marzipan skulls and sugar fish and little white chocolate bones for 5 cents each. Pass any bakery and you'd see cakes slathered in blue icing, cakes sprinkled with sea-salt.If you made a Day of the Dead cake at home you always hid a coin in it, and the person who found it was supposed to live forever. Once, when she was four, Georgia had swallowed the coin and almost choked. It was still one of her favourite stories about herself. In the afternoon, there'd be costume parties. You dressed up as Lazarus or Frankenstein, or you went as one of your dead relations. Or, if you couldn't think of anything else, you just wore something blue because that was the colour you went when you were buried at the bottom of the ocean. And everywhere there were bowls of candy and slices of special home-made Day of the Dead cake. Nobody's mother ever got it right. You always had to spit it out and shove it down the back of some chair. Later, when it grew dark, a fleet of ships would set sail for the ocean cemeteries, and the remembrance service would be held. Lying awake in his room, he'd imagine the boats rocking the the priest's voice pushed and pulled by the wind. And then, later still, after the boats had gone, the dead would rise from the ocean bed and walk on the water. They gathered the flowers that had been left as offerings, they blew the floating candles out. Smoke that smelt of churches poured from the wicks, drifted over the slowly heaving ocean, hid their feet. It was a night of strange occurrences. It was the night that everyone was Jesus... ...Thousands drove in for the celebrations. All Friday night the streets would be packed with people dressed head to toe in blue. Sometimes they painted their hands and faces too. Sometimes they dyed their hair. That was what you did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year. And then, sooner or later, you turned blue forever.

Young Goodman Brown came forth, at sunset, into the street of Salem village, but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grand-children, a goodly procession, besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tomb-stone; for his dying hour was gloom.

I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

The churchyard was brick-hard clay, as was the cemetery beside it. If someone died during a dry spell, the body was covered with chunks of ice until rain softened the earth. A few graves in the cemetery were marked with crumbling tombstones; newer ones were outlined with brightly colored glass and broken Coca-Cola bottles. Lightning rods guarding some graves denoted dead who rested uneasily; stumps of burned-out candles stood at the heads of infant graves. It was a happy cemetery. The

When Harper was in among the stones she could see brass plaques screwed into the towering pillars of granite. One listed the names of seventeen boys who had died in the mud of eastern France during the First World War. Another listed the names of thirty-four boys who had died on the beaches of western France during the Second. Harper thought all tombstones should be this size, that the small blocks to be found in most graveyards did not even begin to express the sickening enormity of losing a virgin son, thousands of miles away, in the muck and cold. You needed something so big you felt it might topple over and crush you.

The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. “All is vanity.” All. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing grave-yards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and through out a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly;—not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.

The Poe Toaster by Stewart Stafford They call me The Poe Toaster, A sixty-year mourner, no boaster, With roses and cognac, I paid homage, To gothic Quarles’ eternal foggage. Some call me ghoul, stalker, graver, Obsessed fan, tombstone trader, Let him sleep unbroken, still his ghost, Tomahawk, overdue a tribute toast. Three roses; in-law, Eddy and wife, Cognac, exorbitant luxury in life, Relax, for I was kind, my friend, Pouring amontillado until the end. Why I stopped, if I'm woman or man, Are mysteries for C. Auguste Dupin, Shipwrecked on Night’s Plutonian shore, Allied with the silken darkness of yore. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colorful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles. It looks as though the dead are dancing at a children's ball. Yes, a children's ball, because the dead are as innocent as children. No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, in Hitler's time, in Stalin's time, through all occupations. When she felt low, she would get into the car, leave Prague far behind, and walk through one or another of the country cemeteries she loved so well. Against a backdrop of blue hills, they were as beautiful as a lullaby.

Harris wanted to get out at Hampton Church, to go and see Mrs. Thomas’s tomb. “Who is Mrs. Thomas?” I asked. “How should I know?” replied Harris.  “She’s a lady that’s got a funny tomb, and I want to see it.” I objected.  I don’t know whether it is that I am built wrong, but I never did seem to hanker after tombstones myself.  I know that the proper thing to do, when you get to a village or town, is to rush off to the churchyard, and enjoy the graves; but it is a recreation that I always deny myself.  I take no interest in creeping round dim and chilly churches behind wheezy old men, and reading epitaphs.  Not even the sight of a bit of cracked brass let into a stone affords me what I call real happiness.

By the time I arrived in the town of Mojave, California, on the night before I began hiking the PCT, I’d shot out of Minnesota for the last time. I’d even told my mother that, not that she could hear. I’d sat in the flowerbed in the woods on our land, where Eddie, Paul, my siblings, and I had mixed her ashes in with the dirt and laid a tombstone, and explained to her that I wasn’t going to be around to tend her grave anymore. Which meant that no one would. I finally had no choice but to leave her grave to go back to the weeds and blown-down tree branches and fallen pinecones. To snow and whatever the ants and deer and black bears and ground wasps wanted to do with her. I lay down in the mother ash dirt among the crocuses and told her it was okay. That I’d surrendered. That since she died, everything had changed. Things she couldn’t have imagined and wouldn’t have guessed. My words came out low and steadfast. I was so sad it felt as if someone were choking me, and yet it seemed my whole life depended on my getting those words out. She would always be my mother, I told her, but I had to go. She wasn’t there for me in that flowerbed anymore anyway, I explained. I’d put her somewhere else. The only place I could reach her. In me.

saw nothing finer or more moving in Russia than Tolstoy’s grave. That illustrious place of pilgrimage lies out of the way, alone in the middle of the woods. A narrow footpath leads to the mound, nothing but a rectangle of soil raised above ground level, with no one guarding or keeping watch on it, only two huge trees casting their shade. Leo Tolstoy planted those trees himself, so his granddaughter told me beside his grave. When he and his brother Nikolai were boys, they had heard one of the village women say that a place where you planted trees would be a happy one. So they planted two saplings, partly as a kind of game. Only later did the old man remember that promise of happiness, and then he expressed a wish to be buried under the trees he had planted. And his wish was carried out. In its heart-rending simplicity, his grave is the most impressive place of burial in the world. Just a small rectangular mound in the woods with trees overhead, no cross, no tombstone, no inscription. The great man who suffered more than anyone from his own famous name and reputation lies buried there, nameless, like a vagabond who happened to be found nearby or an unknown soldier. No one is forbidden to visit his last resting place; the flimsy wooden fence around it is not kept locked. Nothing guards that restless man’s final rest but human respect for him. While curious sightseers usually throng around the magnificence of a tomb, the compelling simplicity of this place banishes any desire to gape. The wind rushes like the word of God over the nameless grave, and no other voice is heard. You could pass the place without knowing any more than that someone is buried here, a Russian lying in Russian earth. Napoleon’s tomb beneath the marble dome of Les Invalides, Goethe’s in the grand-ducal vault at Weimar, the tombs in Westminster Abbey are none of them as moving as this silent and movingly anonymous grave somewhere in the woods, with only the wind whispering around it, uttering no word or message of its own.

It was supposed to say “Great Artist” on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say “such a good teacher/​daughter/​friend” instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL. Don’t all women feel the same? The only difference is how much we know we feel it, how in touch we are with our fury. We’re all furies, except the ones who are too damned foolish, and my worry now is that we’re brainwashing them from the cradle, and in the end even the ones who are smart will be too damned foolish.

Death of an Old Seaman We buried him high on a windy hill, But his soul went out to sea. I know, for I heard, when all was still, His sea-soul say to me: Put no tombstone at my head, For here I do not make my bed. Strew no flowers on my grave, I’ve gone back to the wind and wave. Do not, do not weep for me, For I am happy with my sea. Langston Hughes

Ferencz’s rabbinical council made clear that very special rules apply: once a cemetery, always a cemetery; no flowers can be placed on the casket or grave; if a tombstone falls, it must be left lying where it fell; nothing can ever be done to profane the bodies or memory of the deceased.

Before we left the chapel, I caught up with my grandfather to make one final plea. “Grandpa,” I said, “we can’t bury Dad’s ashes.” “That’s not your decision to make.” He started to walk away, but I grabbed his sleeve, knowing it would be my last chance. “Wasn’t it his?” I asked. “He wanted to be cremated because he didn’t want to be buried. Please, let us take his ashes out to Montauk.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized that I’d made a critical mistake. My grandfather realized it, too. He associated Montauk with my father’s frivolous hobbies, such as boating and fishing, activities that had distracted him from the serious business of real estate. “Montauk,” he repeated, almost smiling. “That’s not going to happen. Get in the car.” Sunlight glinted off the marble and granite grave markers as our grandfather, his light blue eyes squinting beneath his enormous eyebrows at the brightness of the day, explained that the tombstone, which was already inscribed with his mother’s and father’s names, would be removed temporarily so my father’s name and dates could be added. As he spoke, he spread his hands wide, like a used-car salesman, bouncing on the balls of his feet, almost jaunty, knowing he was in the presence of a rube. My grandfather followed the letter of the law and then did what he wanted. After my father was cremated, they put his ashes into a metal box and buried them in the ground.

Set within the sea of stones were little oval buildings, like beehives without openings. Marra knew at once that they were graves.

Muslim cemeteries aren’t like other cemeteries. There are no ornate flower arrangements laid on graves; no gilded tombstones that tower above the others, emblematic of the deceased’s status and wealth in life; and no engraved eulogies – ‘Loving father, husband, son’, for example – symbolising a legacy left behind, a proud heritage continued. Muslim burial plots make no delineation between their occupants. They are mostly plain, a single plaque marking each grave detailing the person’s name, date of birth and date of death. These uniform graves make no distinction between wealth and class; here, a vagrant may spend eternity next to a millionaire. In these cemeteries, the dead are all equal, just as they were intended to be in life.

Showmen's Rest was truly something to behold. Throughout the entire yard, statues and carvings of elephants, clowns, and tight-rope walkers danced on the gray and white surfaces of tombstones and grave-markers. For the first time, Michael got the feeling that the men and women who'd been buried there were probably really happy with their final resting place. It was a touching tribute, one that honored their passion in life and that had been constructed out of love and respect.

It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is F*** YOU ALL.

Death continues to stalk the streets, stealing the souls of our children as they sleep. We're running out of fingers to close their eyes, voices to bless their souls, hands to dig their graves. Poisonous fumes from their unburied bodies contaminate the alleys, and the ghosts of those who have been buried rise nightly. Their tiny forms dance above their tombstones, an agonising reminder that we've failed them.

So this journey could have begun when I learned sometime in the late 1990s about Abbey’s mysterious burial. Abbey died in Tucson, Arizona, in 1989 at age sixty-two from internal bleeding. After his death, four friends transported his body to a desert. There, they illegally buried him in a grave hidden to all but his friends and family and those turkey vultures banking overhead. His friends laid a hand-chiseled basalt tombstone atop the grave. The stories tell us that the tombstone reads, “Edward Abbey. 1927–1989. No Comment.

One unusual fringe benefit of time travel is the ability to visit your own grave. Personally I find the practice a tad morbid, but I do get some satisfaction from the fact that the disproportionate dates on my tombstones have confounded many a passerby.” -Excerpt from the journal of Harold Quickly, 1897   “Get

She could remember him at church, sitting with his family in the second pew, behind her and her mother. She had worn her hair in long braids as a child, and she had liked to toss the braids over the back of the seat, where they would not dig into her back. One Sunday morning she had been forced to sit through most of her father’s lengthy sermon with her head tilted back at an unnatural angle while Christopher’s knee had kept her braid held firmly against the back of the pew. She had been released finally, she remembered, a moment after hearing the sound of a swift slap immediately behind her. And then there had been the time when Mrs. Sinclair had been visiting at the parsonage and the children had wandered outside. She remembered sitting on a tombstone in the churchyard, finally too terrified either to get down or to turn her head as Christopher stood in front of her, very seriously and sincerely describing the ghosts that came out of the graves at midnight. For many nights after that she had awoken Mama with her screams as she struggled out of some nightmare. Rebecca was very thankful to peel off her remaining clothes when the water finally arrived and to climb into the bathtub and soak in the lukewarm suds. It had been just such a day when she had finally realized that both she and Christopher were

Where is Abu Fadi,” she wailed. “Who will bring me my loved one?” —The New York Times, 9/20/1982 I do not wish to speak about the bulldozer and the red dirt not quite covering all of the arms and legs Nor do I wish to speak about the nightlong screams that reached the observation posts where soldiers lounged about Nor do I wish to speak about the woman who shoved her baby into the stranger’s hands before she was led away Nor do I wish to speak about the father whose sons were shot through the head while they slit his own throat before the eyes of his wife Nor do I wish to speak about the army that lit continuous flares into the darkness so that the others could see the backs of their victims lined against the wall Nor do I wish to speak about the piled up bodies and the stench that will not float Nor do I wish to speak about the nurse again and again raped before they murdered her on the hospital floor Nor do I wish to speak about the rattling bullets that did not halt on that keening trajectory Nor do I wish to speak about the pounding on the doors and the breaking of windows and the hauling of families into the world of the dead I do not wish to speak about the bulldozer and the red dirt not quite covering all of the arms and legs because I do not wish to speak about unspeakable events that must follow from those who dare “to purify” a people those who dare “to exterminate” a people those who dare to describe human beings as “beasts with two legs” those who dare “to mop up” “to tighten the noose” “to step up the military pressure” “to ring around” civilian streets with tanks those who dare to close the universities to abolish the press to kill the elected representatives of the people who refuse to be purified those are the ones from whom we must redeem the words of our beginning because I need to speak about home I need to speak about living room where the land is not bullied and beaten to a tombstone I need to speak about living room where the talk will take place in my language I need to speak about living room where my children will grow without horror I need to speak about living room where the men of my family between the ages of six and sixty-five are not marched into a roundup that leads to the grave I need to talk about living room where I can sit without grief without wailing aloud for my loved ones where I must not ask where is Abu Fadi because he will be there beside me I need to talk about living room because I need to talk about home I was born a Black woman and now I am become a Palestinian against the relentless laughter of evil there is less and less living room and where are my loved ones? It is time to make our way home.

I am in the pit, and I am screaming. If I am screaming – I am alive. If I am alive – how and why am I in the pit? My family and friends are not in the pit And they are not alive. I heard their last cry. They did not die and were not buried, Instead, they were poisoned and strangled. I did not bury my loved ones, I did not mourn, did not cry, Did not rend my clothes1, Did not sit shiva2 for them, Did not say Kaddish3 for them. There is no dead body, no funeral, I put up no tombstone, because there is no grave. I carry their memory within me.

The contrast between the two was conspicuous in ways not dissimilar to that between the two cemeteries at Monticello. There were far fewer tombstones at the People’s Memorial Cemetery than at Blandford, and those there were indiscriminately scattered across the brown grass. There were no flags ornamenting the graves. There were no hourly tours available for people to remember the dead. There was history, but also silence.

Opening the box, they withdrew the thick plastic grave markers. His lips twitched as he scanned the epitaphs: R.I.P. Van Winkle, Dee Cayed, I.M. Gone, and Barry R. Bones. "Dracula, Fangs for the Memories," he read aloud and, chuckled. Grace held up her favorite. "Rigger Mortys. Death Grips and Holds Me Tight, But I Shall Return on Halloween Night." Tongue-in-cheek, he asked her, "What would your headstone say?" "She Threw a Great Party," came to mind. "How about yours?" "Death by Decorating.

They’d heard it all, the dead: crying children, wailing widows, confessions, condemnations, questions that they could never answer; Halloween dares, raving drunks—invoking the ghosts or just apologizing for drawing breath; would-be witches, chanting at indifferent spirits, tourists rubbing the old tombstones with paper and charcoal like curious dogs scratching at the grave to get in. Funerals, confirmations, communions, weddings, square dances, heart attacks, junior-high hand jobs, wakes gone awry, vandalism, Handel’s Messiah, a birth, a murder, eighty-three Passion plays, eighty-five Christmas pageants, a dozen brides barking over tombstones like taffeta sea lions as the best man gave it to them dog style, and now and again, couples who needed something dark and smelling of damp earth to give their sex life a jolt: the dead had heard it.

There are no tombstones to mark the graves, so at least on these pages, the names reside.

In your care I will be released from my worries” (CIL 11.137). In a few brief sentences, this man’s colorful life, during which he passed from freedom to slavery to freedom and ultimately to prosperity, is memorialized. An aspect of life that these tombstones bring to light is the strong emotions that tied together spouses, family members, and friends. One grave marker records a husband’s grief for his young wife: “To the eternal memory of Blandina Martiola, a most blameless girl, who lived eighteen years, nine months, five days. Pompeius Catussa, a Sequanian citizen and a plasterer, dedicates this monument to his wife, who was incomparable and very kind to him. She lived with him five years, six months, eighteen days without any shadow of a fault. You who read this, go bathe in the baths of Apollo as I used to do with my wife. I wish I still could” (CIL 1.1983). The affection that some parents felt for their children is also reflected in these inscriptions: “Spirits who live in the underworld, lead innocent Magnilla through the groves and the Elysian Fields directly to your places of rest. She was snatched away in her eighth year by cruel fate while she was still enjoying the tender time of childhood. She was beautiful and sensitive, clever, elegant, sweet, and charming beyond her years. This poor child who was deprived of her life so quickly must be mourned with perpetual lament and tears” (CIL 6.21846). Some Romans seemed more concerned with ensuring that their bodies would lie undisturbed after death than with recording their accomplishments while alive. An inscription of this type states: “Gaius Tullius Hesper had this tomb built for himself, as a place where his bones might be laid. If anyone damages them or removes them from here, may he live in great physical pain for a long time, and when he dies, may the gods of the underworld deny entrance to his spirit” (CIL 6.36467). Some tombstones offer comments that perhaps preserve something of their authors’ temperaments. One terse inscription observes: “I was not. I was. I am not. I care not” (CIL 5.2893). Finally, a man who clearly enjoyed life left a tombstone that included the statement: “Baths, wine, and sex ruin our bodies. But what makes life worth living except baths, wine, and sex?” (CIL 6.15258). Perhaps one of the greatest values of these tombstones is the manner in which they record the actual feelings of individuals, and demonstrate the universality across time, cultures, and geography of basic emotions such as love, hate, jealousy, and pride. They also preserve one of the most complicated yet subtle characteristics of human beings—our enjoyment of humor. Many of the messages were plainly drafted to amuse and entertain the reader, and the fact that some of them can still do so after 2,000 years is one of the best testimonials to the humanity shared by the people of the ancient and the modern worlds.

Leave the baited hook alone. Turn off the ringer to that phone. Don’t take an interest in that loan. Don’t be a clone with no ring-tone of your own. Be prone to roam the guilt-free zone. Don’t fetch the bone, by the mirror thrown. Leave it alone with its sad groan (a tombstone on a grave unknown). Don’t postpone the gemstone able to atone. A wind has blown in the homegrown cyclone. The eagle has flown with wings long grown. A lesson’s been sown in the reflection’s own.

What consequences can there be for a dead man they throw from one grave into another? Not even a tombstone as tall as a house on his final resting place would be of any consequence to the dead man.

Going back to Walter's house had been like visiting a cemetery where there were no tidy tombstones recording beginnings and endings but only question marks over the graves.

It was supposed to say “Great Artist” on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say “such a good teacher/​daughter/​friend” instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.