10/10/20 Weekend Grif.Net - Epitaph
Robert Griffin
I grew up going to the cemetery. Taking a lunch and tending graves in the spring and fall was a family ritual. Playing with the big cannon that “guarded” the entrance of Hillside Cemetery became another toy.
I “met” my Uncle Billy and my Aunt Dolores who passed as teens decades before I was born. I snipped grass from Grandma Bess who died during the War, and then her husband, my beloved Grandpa, who lived with us and patiently endured a million questions from me as a boy. And later buried my sister, killed in a motorcycle accident when I was in high school. Then my Mom, my Aunt Margaret who helped raise me, my Aunt Mae and twenty years ago my namesake and dad, Robert “Bud” Griffin.
I cannot say that all this led to a fascination with cemeteries over my seven+ decades. But while friends were exploring the streets of Central City and the old Colorado gold mines, I was walking thru the cemetery. Boot Hill was a required tourist spot in Tombstone. Before heading up toward the Klondike I walked thru the cemetery in Skagway to read of those gone by. I tearfully visited graves of some of my best friends in military cemeteries, having given all in an unnamed rice paddy in Vietnam. I held ceremonies as a Civil War re-enactor at battlefield graveyards. And many trips to Arlington, to show my family the changing of the guard and walk quietly in the gloaming in those gardens of stone.
People try to make light of death, as often seen on tombstones. A couple I’ve chuckled at:
**Here lies the body of old John Brown, lost at sea and never found.
**School is out. Teacher has gone home.
**He did not reach 70 going like 60.
**Here lies Lester Moore, four shots from a .44. No Les, no more.
**I told you I was sick.
**I fought a good battle, but I losted.
And the poignant reminder from Wall Street’s Trinity Church cemetery:
**Remember friends as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
So, as I am, you soon will be,
Prepare for death and follow me.
The Bible is clear that we ALL will die. “As in Adam, all die” (I Cor 15:22). No one gets out of this world alive. And a nice stone, kind words, flattering picture in the obituary column in the morning paper are all good. Memories in lives of the others – kids, grandkids and more – keep a part of us alive.
But death does not close the books on our life, for the Bible also says “It is appointed for man to die once, but then the judgment” (Heb 9:27). Only a fool would plan an epitaph, put pix on a disc to show at a funeral service and then NOT prepare to meet the eternal God.
There is one word none of us want on our tombstone: “Fool”. The time to think about death, and fall on the mercy of God while we can is now. “Prepare to meet thy God”.
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
"Jesus Knows Me, This I Love!"