No. 146

The Hand From Beyond Tomb: Speaking of getting comfortable with death, holy Mary mother of god if this isn’t the most ridiculous tombstone ever. What produces this? Comedy? Ego? Dimentia? We’ve tromped through a lot of cemeteries on this trip and only one thing has been consistent in all of them – an abundant lack of originality. And Amy loves cemeteries, so we visit lots of them. But after reading the hundredth “In Loving Memory” epitaph, I’m craving the tragic collection of unhappy endings you find in the Asian jungle cemeteries full of doomed 18th century missionaries and explorers.

It has given me a lot of time to reflect on my own epitaph I suppose, even though I don’t actually want to be buried. Just in case, I settled on a recent quote from Amy’s dad:

I guess he has a pretty good vocabulary.

Except I suppose it would be had a pretty good vocabulary. But all bets are off, now that I’ve seen the Hand From Beyond tomb in Oaxaca’s Panteon General. Who wouldn’t want to scare the hell out of their relatives for all eternity with this one? You kids settle down back there, or I’m going to make you stand in grandpa’s grave hand again. Genius.