JIM COYLE is a columnist with the Toronto Star. Reproduced
Courtesy Torstar Syndication Services.
Nov.11, 2004. 01:00AMWhen all is said and done ...
JIM COYLE
How often we dream, on our worldly sojourn, of getting in the perfect, devastating final word. A quarrelsome spouse. A troublesome boss. An insolent clerk. An obnoxious teenager. All practically begging, our good natures tested beyond endurance, to be put in their place with a succinct and laser-guided killer line.
But too often, prudence obliges us to bite back the few well-chosen words that would lay waste to our tormenter. Too often, the mot juste does not occur to us until too late, after the ears into which it should be flung have departed.
Jo Erickson has a thing for last words. In her case, we mean the literal kind. The last last words. Epitaphs.
The Uxbridge woman has just published a collection of her favourites. She calls it, naturally, Engraved in Stone: Timeless Epitaphs of Celebrities, Scoundrels and Everyday People. And, without question, it is a labour of love.
Erickson has published the book herself as a fundraising project for hospice care in Durham Region, where she works in social services. She says that giving care and comfort to the dying is important work, work that defines "our essential humanity.'' Though she understands that some might find a volume containing no small number of flip and funny farewells to be a little odd.
``Yet death is the one unavoidable reality,'' she says in a foreword. ``It is the endpoint at which our lives achieve a final perspective. And epitaphs, I believe, are simply an expression of this. They are ultimately celebratory and life-affirming.''
Like most such things, and like most of life itself, Erickson's was a project that began less by design than by chance.
About 20 years ago, she entered an epitaph competition sponsored by a local newspaper. She didn't win, but began tucking away catchy ones whenever she came across them. About five years ago, she saw a story in the Star about a cemetery in Oshawa that was a gold mine in this regard. "I Told You I Was Sick,'' the inscription on one tombstone declared. And her collection began growing again.
In recent years, a couple of things aligned, she said in an interview. A friend of Erickson's who runs a hospice in Durham was having funding problems. And an uncle died, leaving Erickson with the wherewithal to publish her collection.
"I thought, well, maybe I could put the two ideas together to make it a hospice fundraiser.''
You'd probably have to go some to top ``That's All, Folks!'' the epitaph on the gravestone of Mel Blanc, the famous voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and other Warner Brothers stalwarts.
Another beauty is that on Frank Sinatra's grave. ``The Best is Yet to Come.'' Less sublime is that of actor Joan Hackett. "Go away. I'm asleep.''
Instructive, perhaps, included as it is in the section titled They Had It Coming, is the verse over the final resting place of a certain Ezikel Height.
"Here lies young Ezikel Height, Died from jumping Jim Smith's claim, Didn't happen at the mining site, The claim he jumped was Jim Smith's dame.''
There is also a section called Graveyard Groaners devoted to that strange species of humanity that never met a pun they didn't like.
``Stranger, tread this ground with gravity,'' says a tombstone in Edinburgh. ``Dentist Brown is filling his last cavity.''
Other professionals seemed given in death to similar references to their life's work.
``The defence rests,'' said the gravestone of a lawyer. ``Office upstairs,'' said that of an Arkansas doctor.
Some of the best, understandably, come from Erickson's chapter on Literary Lions. ``Excuse my dust,'' the cremated Dorothy Parker quips posthumously.
Above the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, erected 26 years after his death through money raised by schoolchildren, was an ideal epitaph taken from his most famous poem.
``Quoth the Raven,
Nevermore.''
You'd think, given such etchings are intended for eternity, that a good proofreading might be essential. But apparently not in Saratoga, N.Y.
"Erected to the memory of John Philips
Accidentally shot as a mark
Of affection by his brother.''
Erickson found that Canadians seem less inclined than those in the U.S. and England to indulge in farewell pronouncements. English epitaphs seem to reflect that country's fabled sense of humour, she said, while the American reflects a brashness and flamboyance.
In this vein, it's hard to improve on the exuberant exit of former NFL great Sid Luckman. "I had it all. I did it all. I loved it all.''
In the end, one of the chief incentives to giving some thought to your own last words might be the knowledge that neglecting to do so could leave the summing up to others. And not everyone declines to speak ill of the dead, as Erickson makes clear in this entry from a gravestone in 1694. ``Here lies my wife in earthy mould, When she lived did naught but scold, Good friends go softly in your walking, Lest she should wake and rise up talking.''
(Information about Engraved in Stone is available at 905-640-1300.)
Jim Coyle usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.