To the Man Who'll Carve My Headstone

Creative Writing
Written By Elizabeth Russell

An open letter to the man who’ll carve my headstone: I’d like to think I’m not the type of person who tells a professional how to do their job. But I think your work is missing the point, so for you I’ll make an exception.


When I was 31, I saw a picture of my namesake that reminded me of you. 

She sat on a relic of a couch next to a relic of a woman, each of them holding a disheveled, squirmy grandchild. Her couch-mate was her counterpart — a great-grandmother on the other side of the family who wore the classic “farmer’s wife” dress and had her hair in disarray. You can’t see her feet in the picture, but I feel certain this great-grandmother is wearing clogs.

The contrast between my namesake and this counterpart is startling. The streaks of muted light along her dress showed she was wearing real satin. Her pearls rested in the curves of her throat as if they grew there. Her lipstick and eye makeup were perfectly set — no signs of sweat or a day’s work anywhere on her delicate frame. She was most certainly wearing close-toed pumps, entirely scuff-free. Probably black. 

These two women were opposites in repose. In sickness and in health. For richer and for poorer.

“I thought she was a drunk,” I said to my aunts as we gathered up our memories. “Oh, she was a lady,” they said. And this is all I know of her — a lady. Perhaps a bit into her liquor, if the legends hold, but a lady nonetheless. 

It was hard to see myself in her — the choice of dress, the darkness of her lipstick…the fact that she even wore lipstick. This was Elizabeth. 

“But it’s when I saw her here — immortalized in paper — that I realized you would end up missing the point.”

You may wonder why I thought of you — the man who will carve my headstone. A well-coiffed lady hardly calls to the mind the chink of hammer on stone meant to mark our place for all eternity. But it’s when I saw her here — immortalized in paper — that I realized you would end up missing the point. 

My point. 

Me.

You see, when you carve her name into my headstone, you’ll have gotten my first name right, sure, but you’ll still have completely misidentified me.

If you decide to add my middle name, you may get a bit closer. Helen. The name of a great aunt about whom I know only this: She liked to sew. Check. She was not married. Check. So there — we have some commonalities. 

But having never met her, I can’t be certain of the fit, and anyways, it will hardly identify me further, given that my middle name is uncommon knowledge. Elizabeth Helen may be the ultimate stranger. 

And then there is Russell. English meaning “red-colored”. A foreign land. An inaccurate descriptor. It’s hard to see how the whole can do much to signify me at all. 

“Elizabeth Helen Russell. That sounds fancy,” they’ll say. “Russell. That’s English isn’t it?” 

This is what the passerby will get from your work. It’s hard to believe anyone would think “aspiring writer” or “loves barbecue sauce” or “Billy Joel fanatic.” No, your carving tells them nothing about me at all.

But of greater offense to me is this: the use of my birth date and my death date. You’ll pick these — the two days of so, so many and the two days that I won’t remember at all.

This. This is where you’ve really got it sideways.

We humans are the only animals that memorialize our dead in stone. Your work is supposed to be indelible. 

Immutable. 

Perdurable. 

Sempiternal. 

But even after millennia, the only thing that’s changed is your tools. You can carve harder stone faster and yet you’re still keen to reduce humanity to a set of dates and names — chips in stone like blips on the radar. 

Fleeting. 

“What was that?”

Of course, the real blips that people notice are the big ones — the crash-course kind of blips not easily ignored. In your cemetery, these are the tallest, most dazzling monoliths, the ones that make cemetery wanderers wonder — “what did this person do to deserve such a monumental burial?” Surely it was something that earned them enough cash to build this giant tower that still tells us nothing of their life, except perhaps their spending priorities.

I know what you’re thinking — “you’ve got it all wrong lady!” You’re just a guy. You use a machine. You just get the paperwork.

This, my friend, is the problem. It’s all “just the facts, ma’am,” but people are so much more than that, aren’t they? 

“That dash you’ll carve between my birth and my death — it’s literally my everything.”

That dash you’ll carve between my birth and my death — it’s literally my everything. In that inch of stone, you’re carving every birthday, every vacation, every house. 

Friend.

Town.

Drink.

Job.

Present.

And yet, you’ll give it such little thought.

No, I’d rather you make the dash as wide as the stone you’ll carve it on. Make it deep enough to hold my children, the dogs, some chickens. Make sure it can fit my mom and dad. A husband. Aunt Jan.

Don’t worry about making the dash symmetrical or straight. You can include curves like my hips, waves like my tears, the mountains I’ve climbed, the projects I’ve done. 

Peaks. 

Valleys. 

Starts. 

Stops.

Please, please do this: mark my grave with a story. 

My story.

In stone.

For more epistolary writing (just learned this word, btw) …

This essay was jump-started by a writing prompt from Illuminate, a writing program by The Kindred Voice. This month, I’m joined by the following amazing women, each of us writing letters to someone, or everyone.

Elizabeth Russell
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