Gravestone Etchings and the Creative

¶ … gravestone etchings and the creative designs now being used to commemorate the deceased final resting grounds. I am interested in learning more about this unique field and thought that this article would provide me with the information I was seeking in order to make an informed decision as to whether to pursue this particular field as a full-time career or a part-time hobby.

What I discovered after reading this article was that I was no further along in my decision than before I began my perusal. The article started off in an interesting manner, but from the starting point only spiraled downward in both content and style.

The article began interestingly enough with Ali Weiss, founder of a company that designs headstones, quoted as saying; "I think baby boomers are going to take back control of the death-care industry" (Heller, 2008, p. 90). The statement piqued my interest having never known that baby boomers had lost control of the death-care industry in the first place. The statement also seemed to lead the reader into what was going to be a controversial article. Further reading of the article seemed to reinforce that idea with one paragraph touting the 'improvements' made to tombstones. These improvements included the efforts to "modernize gravestones (which) involves images etched from photos via computer scans - including Disney characters, Chevy trucks, and wild typography such as the dreaded Comic Sans" (Heller, p. 91). The article even asked a valid question that I looked forward to having answered.

The question was "With options like these - amid an industry suddenly rife with beer-can coffins and sports-logo linings - where is the line between solemnity and silliness?" (Heller, p. 91)

Instead of the answers and information I was seeking from the article, what I discovered was that the article focused on two people who were gravestone cutters and how they practiced and developed their craft.

The article talked about Drew Dernavich a New York cartoonist who has etched type and imagery into "almost 1,000 gravestones" (Heller, p. 92) and Ken Williams, a 65-year-old man who "maintains a sense of tradition in his work" (Heller, p. 92).

That the writer of the article was able to ferret out and interview two reknowned stone cutters is interesting, but the article did not accomplish its stated objective which was to ascertain whether the baby boom generation was going to accomplish its goal of taking back control of the death-care industry. In point of fact, the article did not even provide enough information concerning whether control had really been lost, or if the new headstone fad was just that; a fad. The article was successful in providing information that a trend seems to be developing for the more eccentric individuals in society, and that trend is to be more creative in death than what has been acceptable in the past, but the article does not answer the implied question 'will this lead to a mass movement in tombstone creativity?' Or if the trend will continue to be confined to the relatively small portion of the dying public that it now concerns?

At one point in the article one of the interviewees told the story of how a widow called him to have a headstone hauled away a few days after the deceased had been laid to rest. The interviewee said, "I guess what you try not to do is make such an ungodly mess that the survivors will rip it out of the ground" (Heller, p. 94). Like the interviewee I felt that the deceased was going to have no say-so after death in regards to the tombstone, so if the creativity was to ostentatious the survivors would have it redone anyway.