Let the dear departed have the last laugh – it’s of grave importance
COLUMNIST
HOW do you want to be remembered? Ultimately it’s a grave matter both literally and figuratively.
The headstone inscription is our ultimate Tweet – in fewer than 140 characters we are summed up for eternity.
And usually the loved ones we leave behind are discouraged from allowing us a last laugh.
Dignified platitudes that give no sense of the person we really were are the default option rather than wit and warmth.
This was brought home this week by the story of Maurice Brown, a former RAF airman and firefighter who died of cancer in August aged 87.
Mr Brown had a jokey poem pinned to his kitchen wall which read: “When I am laid to rest, with a tombstone upon my chest, the six words I’d like to see are ‘the little bugger did his best’.”
His 20-year-old grandson, Lewis Ryan, attempted to honour Mr Brown’s final wish and commissioned a stonemason to design a headstone.
But his application to have the verse put on the grave has been rejected by Erewash Borough Council, who explained they were worried the word “bugger” would offend someone.
Granted, it is a swear word. So Mr Brown’s grandson offered to change “bugger” to “beggar”. But still the council would not budge.
Mr Ryan argues that this is an affectionate tribute that captures his grandfather’s character, rather than a rude message: “The word in the context it’s being used in – it’s not used in an offensive way. It shows what he was like as a person. Grandad was a joker.”
And anyone reading it would surely see it that way.
I’d certainly smile if I came upon such an inscription.
It would stand out among the rows of graves with identical phrases that rendered their occupants bland and anonymous.
I’d look at Mr Brown’s dates, that cheeky little epitaph, and conjure up an image of a jovial old gent who’d lived a full life and made the best of it.
I spend quite a lot of time in graveyards, as it happens, which is why I appreciate the value of a compelling inscription.
It’s in the blood. My monumental mason great-great-grandfather’s business, James Hitt & Sons, carved headstones, tombs and angels across Cardiff.
So I do enjoy a creep around a crypt.
And not only because I used to make regular programmes on family history – cemeteries are to genealogists what Harvey Nicks is to shopaholics.
But mainly because they are strangely cheering places.
Approached in the right frame of mind, graveyards are soothing rather than sepulchral.
As a child, I took a secret enjoyment in the Palm Sunday flower run up and down the steep inclines of Trealaw Cemetery.
So many stories inscribed in granite, marble and stone. And if you were buried right on the top of the mountain it was spectacular – you got a tomb with a view.
When I was at university there was a graveyard next to the library. Its peaceful grounds proved the perfect place to sit out an essay crisis.
A decade later, suffering boyfriend trauma, Llandaff Cathedral cemetery became an unlikely sanctuary. What’s a broken heart in the grand scheme of things?
All those souls beneath my feet had probably endured this essential part of the human experience. Llandaff is also one of the more aesthetically pleasing burial grounds. Being home to so many deceased crachach and arty types, there are some truly beautiful memorials there.