(I enjoyed this short story by Nancy Klingener so much that I had to share it!)
In recent years, on one of the newer mausoleums in the Key West Cemetery, a collection of newer epitaphs has quietly gone up, many of them offering their own wry commentary.
There’s one that says, “If You’re Reading This, You Desperately Need A Hobby.”
Another says, “I Always Dreamed Of Owning A Small Place In Key West.”
A couple of them are literary references. Like “So Long And Thanks For All The Fish,” which is from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” series by Douglas Adams. Another says “GROK — Look It Up.” That’s from “Stranger In A Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein.
All of these epitaphs are on one wall. Cemetery sexton Russell Brittain said there was no intentional effort to group them together. But he has noticed that they’re all on the end of the mausoleum, which is reserved for cremation burials.
“I’m not sure why” the new, unusual epitaphs started appearing, Brittain said, “but maybe it’s because they’ve been cremated and they thought they want to leave their mark on history.”
Brittain said he hasn’t received any complaints about the epitaphs — although he did get a question about one of them.
“When I submitted the order to the bronze foundry,” Brittain said, “they called me back and they said, ‘Are you sure this is what you want on this headstone?'”
Amy Culver-Aversa says she chose an unusual epitaph for her late husband, Giorgi, because when she visited his grave, she wanted to laugh.
That was the marker for Giorgio Aversa, who died eight years ago.
This is the epitaph: “Jesus Christ, These People Are Horrible.”
His wife Amy Culver-Aversa chose those words.
“The reason why the epitaph reads like this is because we would go out socially sometimes or we would meet people and he’d go, ‘Jesus Christ, these people are horrible!'” Culver-Aversa said. She said Giorgio would say that “20 times a day.”
And there was another reason she chose such an unusual epitaph for her husband, who died by suicide.
“Because of the tragedy of his death, I didn’t want that to be the last marker,” she said. “So to go and visit him, I wanted to laugh.”
Brittain said his concerns about the epitaph were alleviated when he realized where it would be in the mausoleum.
“It just happens that it’s on the very top. It’s about 10 feet in the air,” he said. “And if you don’t know it’s there, you won’t see it.”
Culver-Aversa said a couple of people questioned her about the headstone. But when she explained it, they understood.
“I think it has more of a tether to the heart than some one-liner that, you know, you picked out of a cemetery book,” she said.
And, Culver-Aversa said, it has the intended effect. When she visits Giorgio’s grave, she laughs. And that makes her want to visit more often.
Renee Garrison is an award-winning author and past president of the Florida Authors and Publishers Association.