“There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

So wrote Charles Dickens in 1843 in a story titled A Christmas Carol.  It starts out with this simple sentence:  “Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.” 

He ends this first paragraph like this:  “Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

But seven years later, on Christmas Eve, he appears again, his apparition visage in a doorknocker.

In one of my favorite all-time literary metaphors, it is described as having a “dismal light about it” and being “like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.” 

So when “Old Marley” strolls (or floats) into Ebenezer Scrooge’s bedroom, we learn that what he wants from old Scrooge is “MUCH” and that it’s time to call for the Ghostbusters.   But while this specter is scaring the “Dickens” out of him, Scrooge keeps his sense of humor by doubtfully asking the poltergeist if he could sit down.  Marley replies that he can and Scrooge insists he “Do it then!”

He then goes on to insult Casper (the not-so-friendly ghost) by calling him “an undigested bit of beef” and issuing the classic “gravy” line.  Needless to say, the phantom Mr. M was pissed!

Nothing gets me more in the “spirit” of the season more than watching all of the many versions of  “Scrooge” while snuggled up on the couch with my wife and some liquid spirits. We’ve got George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart, Albert Finey, Alastair Sim and Scrooge McDuck in the many versions of the Christmas classic.

 As we learn in this cautionary tale, we should consider how we live our lives and how we will be remembered.  Personally, I don’t want to be that see-through dude wearing that ponderous “chain I forged in life.” I’d prefer to be like Patrick  Swazey at the pottery wheel helping shape the perfect clay pot. Thus I try to “be of good cheer” all through the rolling year and be cognizant that “mankind is my business.”

We know that Scrooge considered his old partner a “good man of business.”  If Scrooge had any sense of humor he would have had this inscription put on Marley’s gravestone: " I made some good deals and I made some bad ones.  I really went in the hole with this one.”

We know that we cannot take our money with us when we go, (as if there will be any money left), it may be possible to “leave ‘em laughing.”   I used to walk my dog in a local cemetery and I came across a gravestone with an inscription that always made me smile.  It read:  “DAD – INCORRIGIBLE PUNSTER.”  Underneath it reads, “Ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man.”                 

                                                    

I was talking to someone recently that said they had to do a school project and design their own gravestone. This got me thinking about what I would have as “my last message to the world of the living.” When folks come to visit me, I want to “leave ‘em laughing” with some clever inscription. Here are a few amusing epitaphs that I like but I’ll keep working on my own. 

(a dentist in Scotland) … Dentist Brown Is filling his last cavity.

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288,  (I call this one Life of PI  - it is on the gravestone of  Dutch mathematician,  Ludolph van Ceulen, who spent his life calculating the numerical value of pi.)

Osho (or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) :"Never born, Never died: visited the planet earth between December 11, 1931 and, January 19, 1990."

“Who are you?” asked Scrooge.

“Ask me who I was? “

“Who were you then?” said Scrooge, raising his voice. “You’re particular, for a shade.”

“In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.”

In my Last Will and Testament I’m going to request that a device be installed in my gravestone that will prompt my visitors to ask:  “Who were you?”

And the answer will come out of a little speaker and it will say: “In life I was your latex salesman”  or

“Luke, I was your father. “ (Or any number of other equally clever lines.)

(Note:  Real Star Wars fans will of course know that the line was "No, I am your father")

I came across some excellent examples of  humorous celebrity epitaphs that are  more about gravy than grave. Here are some classics:

Mel Blanc, the man of 1000 voices who did all the Looney Toon characters:

“That’s All Folks.”

Merv Griffin:  “I will not be right back after this message.”

Rodney Dangerfield:  “There goes the neighborhood. “

Leslie Nielsen:  “Let ‘er rip.”

 John Belushi:  "He could have given us a few more laughs, but nooooo."

(This one is strictly urban legend.) Johnnie Cochran, the famous attorney died in 2005 and you might think his gravestone reads: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”  However, it could read: “O.J. did it.”

But life is for the living and I will endeavor to be like Old Fezziwig and hope to be remembered as one who brought happiness to those who knew him, “as if it cost a fortune.”  I "will have no further intercourse with Spirits" and "keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge."  

"And as Tiny Tim observed:  God bless us, everyone!"

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Steve E. Reno