I love epitaphs. I'm fascinated by poetry about death (and if you go with the Metaphysicals, it's death and sex, and extremely odd combinations of both). Charles deLint begins one of his story collections with an epigram he found on a graveyard somewhere in the North-Eastern US. I don't recall where. It was, "I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." I was struck immediately by the hope and faith in that, and how purely it echoes my sentiments. There are loved ones in death that I have not been able to see here in the daylight of existence, even when they were alive. I cannot be afraid of something that holds so much possibility. Blackness is not a fearful or empty thing, but instead is full of the possibility of life and wonder.
While reading ahead in my Sunday School lesson I came across a quotation. Joseph Smith spoke at quite a few funerals, and some of his most profound truths and most touching eloquence are recorded in those speeches. He described death as, "to sleep and wake in each other's embrace and renew their conversation." What a beautiful thought! To be laid down into a grave near ones sweetheart, and to be awoken in the resurrection to continue where life left off, like falling asleep in each-other's arms and waking as if nothing has changed, for it will not have altered so dramatically.
Truthfully, there is an awareness between death and resurrection, and there is likewise very little likelihood that one will die chronologically near one's spouse, but in the larger scheme of the eternities, the pause between death and life should be the briefest of agonizing blinks, the agony of which will be mitigated by joys, and hope, and rest.
And so I've decided that Joseph Smith's quotation above should be my epitaph if I am ever buried. And if I have no spouse here, it is because he is waiting for me there.
