Who Says You Can’t Take it With You?
”They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I’m going to miss mine by just a few days.” Garrison Keillor, American humorist, creator of radio show A Prairie Home Companion
Some folks love to wander through old cemeteries. It may be a weird hobby but one day, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, it was pretty intriguing. Wandering over fossilized carriage tracks into a field of raggedly placed headstones, Joan and I found two that cried out for attention. One looked out over the grass decorated broken fencing. It said, “Here lies Captain Ross Marshall (not his name), who died in the battle of Gettysburg.” Next to it was a small stone laid flat on the ground. It read, “And here lies his concubine.” Those two inscriptions gave us much to ponder on the way home. It started us collecting epitaphs — finally, we created our own.
Some of America’s most illustrious citizens left us with real appreciation of their innate humor and joy. Who says you can’t take it with you?
“Together Again,” George Burns and his beloved wife, Gracie Allen; self written
“I told you I was sick!” Found in a Georgia cemetery
“Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102, The Good Die Young.” (Headstonez)
“The Entertainer” He did it all.” Sammy Davis, Jr.
“Called Back”, Emily Dickinson, self written
“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson,
author of the Declaration of American Independence,
of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom,
and father of the University of Virginia.”
Thomas Jefferson, self written
My dear friend Joan: “Now I start a new adventure.”
Mine: “I loved and I wrote. Lucky me.”
Meditation for the Day
Life is too short to fear its end; live each day as if it is forever and forever one day.
Action for the Day
Today, I’ll open my mind and heart to love and laughter and learning, wherever and whenever. And I’ll start RIGHT NOW.
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