Dance on my grave.

[Hairball]

I have been an FAA certified pilot (multiple engine jet) for many years and an instructor as well.

[RHPeat]

This is on the actual tombstone of Rattlesnake Dick an outlaw in the old California west during the Gold Rush. He was wild and 26 when he died after robbing a stage between Auburn and the Forest Hill Divide, one of the big gold strike areas along the American River between the North and Middle forks. He was captured and jailed for trial when he escaped. It seems the pose that chased him down was a bit faster or had a better aim and the rattlesnake took two shots, His gang killed a pose member but escaped. Rather than return to prison, Dick "rattlesnake" Barter shot himself in the head. His epitaph below.

Rattlesnake Dick
(Richard H. Barter)
1833 — 1859

No further seek his merits to disclose
nor draw his frailties from their dread abode:
there they alike in trembling hope repose,
the bosom of his father and his God.

[RHPeat]

I told them to bury me
where I fell in the orchard
between the plum and apricot
But this sterile
mowed field is all I got.

[mrmustard615]

You're at the wrong grave. I'm the one on the left.

[Phil Istine]

My real name is Carrie

[escorial]

down
in
the
hole

[Schrody]

Everybody knows that cremation releases the spirit more quickly and cleanly. All this cleaver stuff you try to leave behind is going to be just so much heavy baggage when you get wherever you're going -- heaven, nirvana, floating island, pearly gate, the underground passage or the tunnel of light: whichever.

According to the laws of thermodynamics energy can't disappear or be destroyed, only change its state, so maybe, when we die, and our bodies dissolve, our atoms and molecules reshape and become something else, something living. Maybe a wind harnessing the fields, maybe a grass being caressed by the gentle Sun's touch, but what I mostly want to believe are atoms returning to its primeval source - coined in the Big Bang, and dying together with it, in an endless circle of birth and death. When I say home I mean our prime home - Universe, alpha and omega of everything. Some people get such love for their religion (and there's nothing wrong with that), I get it for the Universe; cold, harsh and unforgiving, yet beautiful and mesmerizing. It's a nice and comforting philosophical thought.

[mrmustard615]

Now how are you going to fit that on your gravestone?

[Schrody]

Now how are you going to fit that on your gravestone?

I was just explaining what I mean by going home...

[Aquarius]

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not dead. I’m not asleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am in the softly falling snow.

I am in the gentle showers of rain.
I am in the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush.
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight.

I am in the star shine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom.
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing.
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there. I did not die.

Mary Frye