People often ask me what epitaph I’d choose for my own gravemarker, so I’ve thought about it. Here’s what I wrote in the conclusion of Once Upon A Tomb.

When people ask me what epitaph I’d choose for my own, I’m always tempted to get smart alecky and say something like:
LOVED BY ALL WHO KNEW HER
AND A FEW WHO DIDN’T

or
HER BOOKS ARE STILL AVAILABLE
AT MOST GOOD BOOKSTORES

But I generally sober up and admit I like this one that I found inn the Sundre, AB, cemetery:
WHOM WE HAVE LOVED AND LOST AWHILE

I also like the poem that Mark Twain wrote for his daughter Susie when she died at age 24 in 1890.
WARM SUMMER SUN. SHINE KINDLY HERE,
WARM SOUTHERN WIND, BLOW SOFTLY HERE
GREEN SOD ABOVE, LIE LIGHT, LIE LIGHT,
GOOD NIGHT, DEAR HEART, GOOD NIGHT.

Isn’t that lovely? Poetry belongs on gravemarkers somehow.

However, I have to agree with an older woman who approached me after one of my slide shows and said, “I think I’ve found the best epitaph of all. It’s on my husband’s grave and it says:
TO BE CONTINUED.

“Isn’t that perfect?” she said.

“It is,” I said.