Final Words

An obituary notice can be far more than just announcement, as it aims to encapsulate the essence of a life snuffed out by the wisdom of God's time management. Here in the Southern lands, notices and accompanying rituals can certainly make metaphorical mountains.

I have always been amazed by some of the floral monuments friends or family have devised, such as my favorite: a colorific collection of flowers surrounding a gigantic foam desk phone and the foam-carved legend "Jesus Called."

Will we see in the future a giant foam-cell phone with a simple text-message emblazoned upon a foam screen: "U R L8, Home Now -- Jesus"?

I have now in my possession a collection of laminated plastic rectangles which contain copies of the obituaries of friend and family past. I'm not sure what to do with these - using them as bookmarks or dangling them in a tenuous mobile just doesn't seem right. So they reside in a plain brown envelope.

The poet Robert Burns penned an epitaph for his friend William Muir which reads:

"If there’s another world,
he lives in bliss.
If there is none,
he made the best of this."

And there are some who take the time to carve into stone a Final Witticism:

"Beneath these stones do lie,
back to back, my wife and I.
When the last trumpet the air fill,
if she gets up, I will just lie still."

The somewhat unique Southern style obituary gets a jolt from Angie at DeMarCaTionVille, who says the following should be published upon her demise:

"Angie isn’t with us anymore. Last year, after her seventh nervous breakdown, a dark-skinned Jesus pulled up in a red convertible and carted her swiftly off into Heaven with the radio playing loud and her hair blowing in the breeze. And on the back bumper, there was a sticker, which read, “Honk if you love Jesus, Jorge, Isabella and all the other Immigrants!"

Yeah, I like that. Jesus motorvating upon the human plain in a shiny red convertible, maybe with Elvis working the MapQuest of Souls.