So there’s something serious about seeing John’s death etched in stone on our tombstone. While I LOVE the design, it adds a whole new level of realness. There is no pretending that this never happened. No pretending that I’m not a widow. It is carved on a tombstone, and a bit eerie to see the place where my death will be etched in. Yikes. No denying this widow business is real life.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have been designing a tombstone so young. I went to SEVERAL places to look, and nothing stood out, even after looking at hundreds of snapshots. The closest I got to finding something that I loved was when they pulled out an advertisement book from the 1920’s that was about to be thrown away. I loved the clean basic look to them, not what I ended up going with but it wasn’t completely nauseating.
In our area, the trend is to put a picture of the family, couple or farm on the tombstone. While I usually love this idea, it just didn’t seem right for us, mainly because I have no way of knowing when I would die. I was 33 when John passed and my Grandma is very much alive at 85. That is a full 50 years of potential life I have left.
If I were to put a picture of John and wait to put my picture to be as I am when I die, I’d venture into major cougar territory. Imagine walking by a tombstone and seeing a picture of a man in his thirties beside a lady in her 80’s, I’m pretty sure it would be a little weird. The second option was to do a picture of us together before he died. But that seemed weird too because I have no idea what the next 50 years will hold. Or I could die tomorrow and it would have been okay. Maybe I put too much thought into this, but I’m glad that I opted out of the picture idea.
Then one day, this happened across my Facebook page. I LOVED this tombstone more than words could ever say. It told a story, something that a random piece of clip art couldn’t. I can imagine her telling people that they would never get the recipe while she was alive but over her dead body. While it is impossible to really know a person by looking at their tombstone, you certainly get an idea of her personality. I LOVE THAT!
We don’t have a famous recipe but John has definitely left his mark through his electrical drawings and that is how the idea was born.
The lines on the front and the drawing on the back were taken directly from John’s robotic drawings from work. The images were cleaned up a little and obviously altered to include the kid’s names, hearts, and other small details. Perfect.
I struggled a little to make it about both of us, instead of just John, because one day I’ll be buried there too. Ahhh… the realities of a widow. And quite honestly, I have no idea what my dash (the dash between birth and death) will hold in the future. That’s when the peonies were added in, they were used in our wedding. I have them planted around our home, and a few fake ones in the house. That would be my contribution.
You might overlook this small detail if you don’t know it’s there, but on the bottom right of the tombstone is a small flying insect hidden. I love the presence of the fly, to me, it represents both John ‘visiting’ to give encouragement when I needed it the most. But the fly also has the ability to survive, and sometimes thrive in the shittiest of situations. I feel like this period in my life will always be significant, because honestly IT. IS. ROUGH.
There is a secret message to the kids in Morse code. The kids know what the Morse code says, I have it hung at home as well. However, it isn’t something that we talk about often, so if I were to die tomorrow, they would probably forget it until one day they go to visit and one of the kids has become a controls engineer like John and is analyzing his drawing and can figure out what that part is for. And then they will go on a mission to figure out what those dots mean, discover that it is Morse code, and relearn the meaning. I might just have an active imagination. haha.
I hate that at this point in my life I have my own tombstone, but I liked how it turned out. Now, I hope that it will be a very long time until my date of death is added… a really long time, at least until the kids are grown. I hope my dash is much longer than John’s. So put your phones down when you are driving so I’m not murdered too. Deal? Thanks.
Thank goodness for the amazing folks at Versailles Monuments for making my vision a reality. They combined engraving and skimming on the same tombstone… usually, people pick one or the other. Versailles Monuments learned how to engrave peonies, usually, people ask for roses. They invited me in to check out their practice rounds a similar piece of stone. More than once, I heard them say, “Well, we’ve never done anything like this before, but we can try it.” I’d be getting something amazing or something that no one would ever want to repeat! In my opinion, it turned out pretty darn amazing!
I also cannot write this without thanking my sister in law, she visited different cemeteries from different eras trying to get a feel for simplicity and then designed a few options for me to bring to Edwin Nicols Monuments to start their drawings.
I love how it turned out and hope that it is something that remains as special as it is today. What would you want to include on your tombstone? Have you told your people? Or better yet, go pick it out and have it installed before you die to save your loved ones the heart ache. Then, they could be sure that you loved what was picked out.
In the Blink of a Fly is led by Leah Fullenkamp. Leah is the mother of four young children. Their lives were tragically altered after a crash caused by distracted driving killed her husband and her children’s father. This website is the tale of them learning to live again and serves as a passion project to help prevent distracted driving and this tragedy from happening to someone else.
