What do you want on your tombstone?

 I'm so disappointed.  Someone famous literally said "here's what I want my headstone to read" and no one did it.

I'm not a science fiction fan.  Not specifically.  I am, however, a fan of great writing.  So, I've been reading this book On Being a Writer that's full of interviews of mostly old white (and now dead) men on what their life is like (er... was).  It's not exciting.  I'm not getting tons out of it.  

One of the interviews was of Ray Bradbury.  There was a lot of blah blah blah about how he's great and his books are great.  Yeah yeah.  I get it.  But what I found really cool was what he said he wanted on his headstone when he died:

"Here lies a teller of tales.  If he had lived ten centuries ago, you would have walked down a street in old Baghdad or in some Middle Eastern city and there among the menders of copper and the shapers of clay turned into a Street of the Story Tellers and found him seated there among the tellers of tales who have existed since men came out of the caves.  This is a proud heritage.  This was his."

WOW!  So great, right?  Naturally I went in search of his actual tombstone and here's what I found:



Really?  Reduced to one piece of work?  Wow.  I wonder what he would say if he saw this.  I don't know what I want on mine.  But I hope that if I am careful enough to tell someone that people listen.  Sorry Mr. Bradbury.  We messed this one up.


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