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LAST LAUGH

Earl Fowler

Earl Fowler


RD.com, the online version of Reader’s Digest, ran a fun (if slightly macabre) piece by Lauren Cahn last year titled “19 Funniest Tombstones That Really Exist.”


I’m not sure where she came up with the notion that “if you laugh at dark jokes you’re probably a genius” — you might just as well be a psychopath aroused by pulling the wings off flies — but I did dig many of the examples she unearthed, you’ll pardon the expression.


For example, the headstone for the legendary Mel Blanc — who voiced such popular cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd — reads THAT’S ALL FOLKS, the three epic words that brought each dearly beloved Looney Tunes cartoon to an end.


Talk show host Merv Griffin’s monument signs off with a neat twist on what was once his standard comment heading into a commercial:  I WILL NOT BE RIGHT BACK AFTER THIS MESSAGE.


There are now any number of tombstones out there with variations on I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK or I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THAT SICK DAY, but Irish writer and comedian Spike Milligan  — co-creator of the influential British radio comedy program The Goon Show — went one better by having the “I told you I was ill” message translated into Gaelic in his inscription.


Fabulous actor Jack Lemmon’s gravestone looks like a marquee and reads like this:


JACK LEMMON

in


Your gaze naturally goes from there straight to the ground. And you don’t have to be a genius to appreciate this as dark humour at its starkest.


The headstone for director Billy Wilder, Lemmon’s great collaborator, reads: I’M A WRITER BUT THEN NOBODY’S PERFECT. If you remember the ending to the 1959 movie classic Some Like It Hot, you’ll recognize a perfect ending when you see one.


Recycling an old chestnut he used to tell on the Carson show, self-deprecating comedian Rodney Dangerfield went with this as his epitaph: THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD. He never did get no respect.


Regina boy Leslie Nielsen indulged his penchant for fart jokes with three little words to enliven his final resting place: LET ’ER RIP. Funny ... but better not stand too close.


And then there are the odd tombstones erected for people more famous in death than they ever were in life. Take, for example, the celebrated one in Tombstone, Arizona, for Wells Fargo Station agent Lester Moore, fatally shot while delivering a package to an armed and disgruntled customer:


HERE LIES

LESTER MOORE

FOUR SLUGS

FROM A 44

NO LES

NO MORE


A woman named Frances Eileen Thatcher, who died in 2006, went out with a simple observation:


DAMN IT’S DARK

DOWN HERE


Dr. Edwin Russell Gann entered the big dirt nap in 1983 with these wistful words for posterity:


I’D RATHER BE

IN ACAPULCO


And so on and so forth, forever and a day. Here’s one last one from the Reader’s Digest list, proving that dentist John Denby retained a sense of humour even while looking a bit down in the mouth in 1927:


I’M FILLING MY

LAST CAVITY


When Denby’s son Maurice, who took up the family trade, died in 1964, he added two poignant words to the family monument:


ME TOO


Sometimes the humour on headstones arrives in the form of an afterthought not intended by the deceased or the bereaved. For example, check out the brisk rejoinder someone scrawled to this sober memento mori on a headstone in an English cemetery:


Remember man, as you walk by,

As you are now, so once was I,

As I am now, so shall you be,

Remember this and follow me.


The ba-da-bing addendum by a passerby:


To follow you I’ll not consent,

Until I know which way you went.


Personally, I intend to eschew sanctimony and project a little levity in my final bulletin to Earth. After discarding some of the weaker candidates such as NOT DEAD … JUST RESTING MY EYES or LIVED, LOVED, FORGOT TO SET THE TIMER ON THE OVEN AGAIN, I’ve narrowed my list of potential epitaph candidates to a top 10.


If any of these strike you as having eternal curb appeal for your own final sayonara, I won’t hold it against you. If you have your own suggestion, would love to see it in black and granite:


10. IF I SAID YOU HAD A BEAUTIFUL BODY, WOULD YOU HOLD IT … OH, NEVER MIND


9. HEY! FINALLY FOUND THE REMOTE!


8. STILL WAITING FOR MY WI-FI TO CONNECT


7. YOU SHOULD SEE THE OTHER GUY


6. YOU NEVER CALL, YOU NEVER TEXT ...


5. PLEASE LEAVE A MESSAGE AFTER THE CREAK


4. ALL DRESSED UP AND NO PLACE TO GO


3. SHOULD’VE TAKEN THAT LEFT TURN AT ALBUQUERQUE


2. FINALLY MADE DEADLINE!


1. SORRY, I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN MUCH, MUCH MORE, BUT I’M RUNNING OUT OF SPA

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4 Comments


I'm going to be cremated. There is only enough room on those tiny plaques for name and years logged.

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Or you could go with just your name and, instead of dates, 0% Body Fat.

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The grass is not greener on the other side.


I didn't need a password to log in.


Least I don't have to shovel the stairs.


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And wasnt it a long way down?

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©2020 by  David Sherman - Getting Old Sucks

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