Possible Epitaphs
- None of it was true.
- This is water. I drowned.
- He was better than nothing.
- Was he a dream of man or nightmare of butterfly?
- The light was unbearable.
- Tweet this!
- Like “Chris is Gone” on Facebook!
- Still the stuff of stars.
- I broke like a bad joke.
- Got in. Got out. Didn’t linger.
- Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
- Monkeys all the way down.
- Admit it: you’ve forgotten me already.
- Chris Lott. He is gone with hardly a trace. Could’ve been a star but just took up space.
- Hell is empty…all the devils were here.
- Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.
- Brevity. Wit.
- I wasted time and now time wastes me.
- Not a note of mine worth noting.
- Every something blent together into a world of nothing.
Notes
The best epitaph I’ve seen is that on Keats’s tombstone (shown above): “Here lies one whose name was writ on water.” My own ideas are hardly profound and, for the most part, dark rather than funny.
I don’t really know what epitaphs are supposed to be for. Are they messages to inspire memory of the dead? Are they to amuse the grave seekers who never knew the dead whose final words they are reading? Are they final words if one doesn’t, in the end, speak them?
favorite: “Hell is empty…all the devils were here.”