And now for some grave humour
By Roshni Johar

SERENITY always prevails in cemetries where upright cypress trees grow and weeping willows hang over the graves, reminding one of the end of life’s journey. The verses written on the tombstones are a silent tribute to the sacred memory of those whose remains lie buried under them. They reflect the character of the dead and, the writer as well.

Sometimes these verses are in sharp contrast to the quietude prevailing there, providing a different kind of humour, showing how some remember their dead.

An unknown person had the following inscribed on a dentist’s gravestone:

Stranger approach this spot with gravity:
John Biringham is filling his last cavity.

The grave of John Vanbrugh, an eighteenth century architect, who had designed the Blenheim Palace, bore these words:

Under this stone, reader, survey
Dead John Vanbrugh’s house of clay.
Lie heavy on him, earth, for he
Laid many heavy loads on thee!
Editors, kindly lend your ears to this one:
Here lies a young author of no reputation,
Who lived by his pen, and thus died of starvation.
He forwards to Heaven a soul in dejection —
Enclosing a stamp for the usual rejection.

The life of a man and his wife did not have a smooth sailing. When the wife died, the husband had this inscribed on her grave:

Here lies my wife: so let her lie!
Now she’s at rest, and so am I!

On another grave, a wife had written on her husband’s tomb:

Rest in peace
Till we meet again!

A tombstone in Yorkshire, England has the following epitaph of a woman killed in an accident:

Here lies the body of Emily White
She signalled left
And then turned right!

John Brown who also met his end in an accident, had this verse on his resting place:

Beneath this slab
John Brown is stowed.
He watched the ads
And not the road.

A wry sense of humour has this epitaph on a military officer’s memorial in N.W. India accidentally shot by his orderly:

"Well done, thau good and faithful servant."

Solomon Rabinovitch, the Jewish writer had a dread of the number 13. Even his manuscripts never had a page numbered 13. He died on May 13, 1916 at the age of 63, but the date on his tombstone reads May 12a, 1916. Here is an unusal gravestone inscription:

Here lies the body of Solomon Peas
Under the daisies and under the trees,
Peas are not here, only the pod,
Peas shelled out and went home to God.
Another odd and amusing one is:
Here lie I and my four daughters,
Killed by drinking Cheltenham waters:
Had we stuck to Epsom Salts
We wouldn’t have been in these here vaults.

In Bath Abbey, a spinister’s grave reads as:

Here lies Anne Mann;
She lived an old maid
And died an old Mann.

Someone took a dig at a talkative maid, by writing on her tombstone:

Beneath this silent stone is laid
A noisy, talkative old maid,
Whose tongue was only stayed by death,
And ne’er before was out of breath.

An absurd one is:

Beneath this mound Charles Gocker now reposes
Step lightly, strangers — also hold your noses.

John Gay had the last laugh when he wrote the following for his own resting place:

Life is a jest, and all things show it.
I thought so once; but now I know it.