Where DOES one buy a tombstone?
I got a call from my sister A the other day and she told me that my uncles had ordered a headstone for my mom. Being her brothers, and from what I can tell, thinking that A and I would never handle it on our own, I guess they thought it was up to them to place a marker in the cemetery. Now, maybe they were just trying to be nice or were getting it as some sort of gift for us, but I gotta say that I really don’t think so.
Once I hung up with A, I called the eldest uncle (the one who’s still speaking to us) to find out what was up. He told me that they had already ordered the marker, described what it looked like and what they had planned on for the inscription. It was simple, very sweet and pretty much exactly what you’d expect a tombstone to say.
The funny (?) thing was that the day prior, my niece V and I had been talking about Mom’s marker ourselves, and contemplating what we should write as her epitaph. I told my uncle as much then I thanked him for his kindness and said that although it’s been 6 months since Mom died, the fact that there’s no marker yet doesn’t mean we don’t have plans for one. I explained that my thought was that we’d get one later this year and place it on the anniversary of her death.
He told me he’d go ahead and cancel his order and let us take over from there. Before we got off the phone, I asked his opinion about us writing something funny for her epitaph. He said that he wasn’t such a huge fan of the idea, but added, “Well, you’re her daughters, so I guess it is really up to you.”
Mom was always a joker and she told us more than once that she wanted her tombstone to be funny. For some reason, death was a huge topic in our household and although we never received any instruction on general life things like the sex talk or the proper way to clean a tub, we were all very aware of what we were to do once she croaked.
She wanted to be cremated (check), her ashes to be spread at Cannon Beach in Oregon (in the works) and she wanted her tombstone to read, “I told you I was sick,” unless of course she died in a car accident or some other non-illness involved way. In that case we were to use Disney World’s entrance to the Haunted Mansion as an inspiration for what to write.
The thing is, after the phone call with my uncle, I’m not quite sure what to do. I mean, my mom definitely made a ton of jokes about dying and cemeteries and epitaphs, but did she really want her memorial marker, the one that is to be placed at the feet of her parents, to be funny?
I know that I would definitely want mine to be funny and I wouldn’t care what anyone thought about it, but Mom was different. What she told us that she wanted on her tombstone, may not necessarily be really what she wanted on her tombstone - no matter how many times she said it.
Which all brings into question, who is this tombstone for anyway? I mean, we were already instructed to not have a funeral or any other sort of ceremony, which we respected, despite the fact that it’s left us all in a mourning limbo where we can’t quite put her to rest.
I dunno. I guess I need to think about it some more, but I gotta say - there sure are a lot of things that rhyme with McCall.
