What Would You Like to Be Written on Your Tombstone?

by | Feb 17, 2026 | Inspiration

What would you like to be written on your tombstone once you’re gone?  Perhaps you’d like to take a humorous route.  Some of the best humor around can be found in graveyards:

  • “I was somebody. Who, is no business of yours”. – Anonymous, Stowe, VT
  • “Here lies Lester Moore / Four slugs from a .44 / No less / No more”– Lester Moore, Boothill Graveyard, Tombstone, Arizona
  • “Here lies the body of/ Jonathan Blake/ Stepped on the gas/ Instead of the brake” – Jonathan Blake, Uniontown Cemetery in Uniontown, PA
  • “Here lies Ezekiel Aikle/ Age 102/ The good die young.” – Ezekiel Aikle, East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia
  • “I told you I was sick”. – William H. Hahn Jr., Princeton Cemetery, Princeton, NJ
  • “He never killed a man that did not need killing”. – Robert Clay Allison, West of Pecos Museum, Pecos, Texas1

Or maybe you would rather take a more serious approach like Actor Harrison Ford did when interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter leading up to the release of Indiana Jones & The Dial of Destiny – his final appearance in the role of the swashbuckling archaeologist in the Indiana Jones series. At the close of the interview, he was asked what he would like to be written on his tombstone.  He replied,  “I’ll settle for, “Was Useful.”2  Another way of looking at his answer is that Harrison Ford wants to leave a good legacy for his peers and the generations that follow- a legacy of hard work and usefulness.

Legacy – “the lasting impact or influence that a person, event, or organization has had on society and the culture through their accomplishments or contributions.”3Every person will leave a legacy to the generations behind them, but reality reminds us that not  every legacy is equal. Former First Lady Elenor Roosevelt, wife of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, verbalized it this way, “Some people are going to leave a mark on this world, while others will leave a stain.4 ”  Some will have a positive impact on the world and will find people sad that they are gone.  Others will leave a stain and will find people glad that they are gone.

As are most things in life, each of us gets to choose the legacy we leave by the way we live and the choices we make.  We get to choose how we relate to God, people, and things. We get to decide how we relate to temptations to sin.  We get to choose how we respond to a blessed life, as well as to a hard life.  We can leave a legacy of generous giving motivated by God’s example as seen in the gift of His Son to us, or we can leave a legacy of selfishness and greed seen in hoarding resources rather than using them to bless others.  We can leave a legacy of steadfast faith in God’s ability and willingness to protect us and provide for us in the face of dwindling resources and other forms of trials and testing, or we can leave a legacy of worry arising from doubting God’s character and especially distrusting His willingness and ability to meet our needs.  We can leave a legacy of integrity and honesty, or we can leave a legacy of dishonesty, fraud, and distrust. We can leave a legacy of deep, abiding, and caring relationships with family and friends -and even strangers among us – or we can leave a legacy of used, abused, and bruised hearts whom we ignored, hurt, or ran over. We can live a life where our word is our bond, or where seeing is believing.

Another way to approach the question of what we would like to be written on our tombstones is what we want people to say about us at our funerals. Those who have left a mark make it much easier on family, friends, and ministers to speak of their lives. Those who have left a stain make it much more difficult for those who speak. I saw this play out recently when I conducted the funeral of an 80-year old member of our church. He had left a huge mark in many areas of his life – family, friends, the Army, his college, his church, his community, and around the globe.  The words flowed freely from me, fellow ministers, and the family members who shared – words like steady and faithful, deep abiding faith in God, compassionate and caring, all-in regarding family, friends, the hurting and needy, God, and the work of God’s church in the world.  I was able to sum up his life with these words, “He was an extraordinary man…an extraordinary man of God.” That’s quite an epitaph for a tombstone.

That which will be written on our tombstones and said at our funerals will depend on whether our legacy is a mark or a stain. May God help us to know the difference.

 

1 wikiHow, Aimee Payne, February 2025.
2 The Week, 2/24/23, p.10 as cited by In Other Word…iows.net.
3 Better Words online dictionary
4 The Week, 1/6/2023, p.19 as cited by In Other Word…iows.net.