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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Words to live by -- and be remembered by forever
MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Lorne Raber of Eden Memorials knows cemeteries are for families. (MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store
My pal Lorne Raber called the other day all excited to share the latest news in death.
Raber can be forgiven his enthusiasm for the subject.
He operates Eden Memorials, and what he's excited about is a new piece of cemetery technology he sold for the first time Saturday to a grieving family that was equally excited about it.
What kind of device could do that? Well, essentially it's a bar code attached to an upright headstone that's designed to lead you to a kind of door to a technological afterlife. Once scanned by a cemetery wanderer with a smartphone, the curious someone is linked to a family-administered website where the dearly departed's life story unfolds.
Complete with video.
More correctly known as a QR (quick response) code -- Raber sourced the technology at an industry convention in San Diego a couple of months back.
The family that became Raber's first customers paid $300 for the chance to tell a story a headstone can't.
"Because the stone is a finite size," Raber explains, "you can't put everything on there that you want."
Perhaps.
But clearly this code-on-a-headstone thing is not for everybody.
It's a family thing and a family thing, only. No one is interested in watching our home movies, let alone visiting an otherwise-anonymous someone's grave and scanning a code.
Cemeteries are for family visits, and many families rarely drop by their own family plots, if they even have one.
I can see the merits of what Raber is selling, and for those who are interested, bless your hearts for trying to keep the memory of a loved one alive as long as possible.
But I'm more of a realist when it comes to QR codes on headstones and life after death. And even if it's marked for an early grave, I love the written word.
Chiselled in stone is even better.
Which reminds me. There's something I've been meaning to ask you.
How would you sum yourself up in a sentence? What I'm really asking is what would your epitaph read if you were to write it today?
Seriously.
Or even not seriously, depending on who you are.
While you're thinking about your own, allow me to offer some famous ones that have inspired and entertained me. Beginning with the inspiring:
"Free at last, free at last
"Thank God Almighty
"I'm free at last."
-- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
"Workers of all lands unite.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point is to change it."
-- Karl Marx (1818-1883)
"Steel true
"Blade straight."
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
As for the entertaining:
"I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
-- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Excuse my dust."
-- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
And, then there's this one from someone who's not famous, but made the end of a column last year.
It's from a Manitoban who chose to borrow from an ancient Roman epitaph and then add his own last line for the living.
"Friend, as you pass by
"As you are, once I was,
"As I am, soon you will be.
"Prepare yourself
"To follow me.
"Make a will, dummy."
-- Gerry Alexander (1927-2009)
And finally, my personal favourite from the man who created the voices for Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang.
"That's all folks!"
-- Mel Blanc (1908-1989)
Actually, that's not quite all folks.
I'm still waiting for your epitaphs.
Those words, chiselled in stone, that represent your own life and legacy.
There's a reason I ask and a reason you should at least give it a try.
The reason being, if you don't like the answer, there's still time to change your life and the few words that sum it up. A few words passing cemetery visitors might even take the time to read. And reflect on.
"Th-th-th, that's all for now folks."
gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 19, 2012 $sourceSection0
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