Tombstone-Speak

Tombstones are short stories.  They say a little, they say a lot.  A person was born in a certain year and died in a certain year, a person that had a name.  But between birth and death, life happened.  There were baseball games and marriages and children.  Fortunes were made or lost, and some people went insane. 

Tragedy and illness are always part of the plot, but usually there's dancing and ice cream to offset the blues and keep the story going.  Clowns and comedians ride in funny little cars or talk about what happens when a priest, a minister, and a rabbi go into a bar.

Some tombstones sit above an epic, like the last moments on the Titanic.  Others whisper of lives spent toiling in factories, with a gold retirement watch closing out the plot.  Many guard secrets that no one ever knew and never will.  As some people say, "I'll carry it to my grave."  Being made of stone, these markers have an ethical obligation to honor the wish for silence.

Once in a blue moon, tombstones grow into monuments, and then you've got a novel on your hands.  But most people are remembered in short stories because the literary market is saturated.  Sooner or later, however, everyone gets published.

~William Hammett 

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