Duct Tape on the Headstone

What should I do with this headstone?

  • Take the headstone back to my shop and turn it upside down and useit as a surface block?

    Votes: 9 30.0%
  • Try to scratchout Tina's name with a line, add a carrot and put in Patty all while using a scratch a

    Votes: 4 13.3%
  • Just put down #1 Wife, a place for # 2 wife, a place for #3 wife, just so Patty feels there may be f

    Votes: 6 20.0%
  • Every few months stick some duct tape over Tina's name and using permenate marker add Patty in the b

    Votes: 3 10.0%
  • Keep the headstone and tell Patty "I always loved #1 more" and buy a different plot for Patty to res

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Buy another headstone, this time adding Pattys name and epoxing them together so that Travis and Tin

    Votes: 8 26.7%

  • Total voters
    30
That is the interesting thing about farms. You can have a business hauling gravel or wood, but when its all said and done, when the trucks and equipment are all gone you have nothing. A farm though...and kids...yep when you are retired, or long since dead...you still got something very special.

I can show you several truck outfits within a few miles of here that are 3rd and 4th generation.. One claims 7generations since they started out hauling stuff with horse's and wagons. A farm can be gone just as easy, many have disappeared over the years. and many are only two or three generations.

Kids or no kids, There still wouldn't be a funeral. I talk to dead relatives all the time. My brother in law being one. During the renovation work, his son and law and I are where asking him out loud what he was up to when he built my sisters house.


The whole idea of putting flowers out on a grave,, Far as I'm concerned thats for the person doing it. If I wanted to plant flowers to honor a family member, I can do that in the front yard. I don't need to do it in a cemetery to show everyone else. IF theres a life after death The old man knows I remember and miss him. I don't need a funeral or a grave stone to prove that to him. IF he's there, he knows, if he's not. It doesn't matter.

If your happy with it Brother,, I'm happy for you :thumb:
But I'm still not coming to your funeral :D
 
About your predicament - Wow Travis, it's really etched in stone, eh?? Maybe your having her name carved on a headstone made her a might bit nervous about your not too distant "plans". "But honey, it was cheaper that way. No i wasn't at the insurance salesman's office the other day. By the way, what's your social security number again???"

short of setting a bronze name plackard over the "Tina" (and the "Travis" too so your thriftiness and marital misfortune don't become the stuff of legend), i think some home remedy involving dynamite or large firearms might help reduce the current stone the the gravel you need it to be.

Either that or you could sell it on ebay.

Paul Hubbman

Darn it, I forgot about the dynamite I got. Incidentally I had my brother (a firefighter) ask the bomb squad he works with, about that dynamite issue I have, and it was not good. They FLIPPED out, saying that as old as it is (which is not that old...28 years) the slightest move could set it off. I'm not too worried about that as I drove around with it in my truck for a week and it was alright, so maybe taking out my headstone might be a good plan. Of course that still leaves me with my Tina tattoo but methinks dynamite may be a bit drastic to remove that from my forearm. (The radial armsaw should world though). :)
 
The whole idea of putting flowers out on a grave,, Far as I'm concerned thats for the person doing it. If I wanted to plant flowers to honor a family member, I can do that in the front yard. I don't need to do it in a cemetery to show everyone else.

Wow...I bet you don't buy the Mrs much for Valentine's Day either huh? Me I am cheap so I go for e-flowers. I grab a picture off the internet of some sappy flowers and then send it to her work email. Its great, it doesn't cost me a penny and yet she gets the feeling that I love her or something. :thumb:

Stick with me boys and you'll be divorced before you know it too with problems like ex-wives chiseled on granite headstones and ex-wives tattooed onto your skin.:D
 
Being a florist and a greenhouse owner-operator, I have seen and heard a lot of negative comments regarding my profession.

First, the funeral process is not for the deceased, but rather for the deceased's family. There is a healing process that occurs during the visitation, memorial service and internment.

Flowers, Caskets and Grave sites/stones all have a purpose.

Personally, I lost my mom on Nov 7,2008. Her casket was a solid pecan wood casket. I won't bore you with the flowers. Suffice it to say they all had meaning.

Travis, you can have the stone fixed. I have seen modifications to stones.

They might be able to rout out the old names and epoxy in a patch, or something similar. It is worth asking the stone masons.

joe
 
Wow...I bet you don't buy the Mrs much for Valentine's Day either huh? Me I am cheap so I go for e-flowers. I grab a picture off the internet of some sappy flowers and then send it to her work email. Its great, it doesn't cost me a penny and yet she gets the feeling that I love her or something. :thumb:

Stick with me boys and you'll be divorced before you know it too with problems like ex-wives chiseled on granite headstones and ex-wives tattooed onto your skin.:D

Actually,, no we don't do valentines day, or Christmas or birthdays or the anniversary. Of course your all thinking what cheap selfish self centered jerk I am. About as carried away as we get is going out to dinner on our anniversary and we don't even do that every year.

Well guess what. The LOML feels the same way I do. :thumb: What can I say she's a smart girl.
 
Travis,
Sorry to hear about the divorce.
Your lucky that you only have to divide the stone and not also the farm.

Oh no this was a long time ago...back in 2004 when I had the distinction of being married to two different ladies the same year! Yep, Tina and I did not get divorced until January, and Patty and I wed in October. :)

As for the divorce, I guess you could say I was lucky. The judge asked Tina 3 TIMES if she knew what she was giving up. Because she wanted to go see her online boyfriend pretty bad, she wanted a quick divorce. She told the judge it was family land and that I had built the house and it should go to me. The judge banged his gavel, I gave her a kiss on the cheek and we went to the register of deeds to get the farm in my name instead of mine and her name. Total cost of the divorce...$11 dollars to have the deed transferred.
 
Actually,, no we don't do valentines day, or Christmas or birthdays or the anniversary. Of course your all thinking what cheap selfish self centered jerk I am. About as carried away as we get is going out to dinner on our anniversary and we don't even do that every year.

Well guess what. The LOML feels the same way I do. :thumb: What can I say she's a smart girl.

I can't share in your enthusiasm. My ex-wife said the same thing...all that stuff was silly. The problem was she SAID it was no big deal, but DEEP INSIDE it really was. She told me all this when we separated and I got the big "you suck as a husband speech".

Incidentally, it was the same way with kids. She could not have any and thus to protect her, I said I never wanted any. She said the same thing to make herself feel better about being barren. In the end we both wanted children really bad but never said anything because of the situation.

The point here is, you never really know how the other spouse feels because it changes second by second (as do us men if the truth be known). Sometimes we put up fronts and only after years of reflection do we realize that those fronts ended up hurting us in the end.
 
Duct Tape

Well to lighten this thread back up a little-I'm all for cremation, wife too. It's in our wills. I might even turn my own urn !:thumb: Wife could make her own from pottery. We have no kids-wanted them, didn't get them. Nobody to take the urns anyway. I have a nephew I'm close to and told him to dump my ashes on the brush/debris pile down back of the pond.

I worked in our church cemetary all through high school, and was the altar boy for most of the funerals. Helped out the local funeral home some after that. Been to a lot of funerals, buried a lot of people including family. Hopefully the funeral services help the living to cope, but it sure is a lot of money dropped in a hole to rot. In my cemetary we used concrete vaults. When we buried my FIL in NYC, they do not use them-I asked ! Let everything break down and settle and put more in on top:eek:. Easiest burial I ever did was a cremation-just a shovel and a small box of ashes-maybe 15 minutes of work. When we had a burial we had a guy come and dig with a backhoe but I filled them in by hand. Usually after school-the bus would drop me off at the cemetary.

Travis-I vote for the duct tape-it'll fix most anything:D Actually, contact the stone company-they should be able to take care of it. I'm sure you are not the first one in this situation:D
 
Travis,
another 'vote' for talk with the stoneworkers, they've got to have a way to remove Tina from the stone and add Patty.

as for funerals etc... recent experience has me thinking strongly about planning for our passing. I"m seriously considering the 'build your own' path. We're both Organ Donors, so I'm even considering cremation, which would mean Urns and not coffins.

oh, and Travis... laser, not RAS
 
and the lesson here ladies and gents.....
never permanently place another person's name on your stone.... or your skin.
For no matter how much you believe at the time that it is forever.... nothing is certain.... except change
Not to mention throwing Murphy's Law into the mix ;)
 
another 'vote' for talk with the stoneworkers, they've got to have a way to remove Tina from the stone and add Patty.

Hmm, it all gets so complicated. Take Tina off, ok. Put Patty on? Maybe she'll get mental on you and wonder if you're planning HER demise. I mean, after all this time, why do it now? Leave Patty's name off? She'll wonder if you're truly committed - 2nd thoughts after all these years? She might start planning your demise. And, if you don't put Patty's name on it, why bother doing anything at this point? After you're done thinking your way through circles, maybe arrange for a freak accident involving the stone. Surely, Travis, you know "some guys". I'm still in favor of the dynamite, though.
Or, lay it flat, carved side down, and use it as a step up into your shop. But i guess that gets into the whole metaphysical "walk all over her . . . and yourself" line of metaphors. Best not even go there.
This is why they make beer.
paulh
 
recent experience has me thinking strongly about planning for our passing. I"m seriously considering the 'build your own' path. We're both Organ Donors, so I'm even considering cremation, which would mean Urns and not coffins.

To each their own I guess, but I kind of have a reverence for headstones, whether it be the patriotic symbolism of walking through row after row in Arlington National Cemetery, or finding a small 3 grave site in the forests of Maine. But there is something neat about headstones...beyond the names and the dates and the fact that these people are all dead. You see between the date they were born, and the date they died there is a simple dash. For the stone masons that chiseled or sand blasted that dash in there, it took little time and was hardly artistic and yet it means so much, for that dash is that persons life.

Coming from a long line of family that has stayed in one town, the dashes are kind of cool. In some cemeteries we take up the entire cemetery, in others a large portion of the cemetery and yet in others we have but one or two family members there. But without question the dashes have produced more dashes and that is the most precious thing of all.

Whatever you do, make the most of your dash...you never know what the date will read on the right side of it.
 
One more interesting point on cemeteries and dashes on headstones. One of the most most powerful headstones in the world resides in Arlington National Cemetery and its what it lacks that makes it so meaningful.

The tomb of the unknown soldier contains fallen soldiers, yet has no dash depicted upon the outside of it.

Food for thought...
 
Travis,
another 'vote' for talk with the stoneworkers, they've got to have a way to remove Tina from the stone and add Patty.

as for funerals etc... recent experience has me thinking strongly about planning for our passing. I"m seriously considering the 'build your own' path. We're both Organ Donors, so I'm even considering cremation, which would mean Urns and not coffins.

oh, and Travis... laser, not RAS

not necessarily.....

you can rent a casket and have a regular visitation so your family can receive and accept condolences from friends and family.

After the viewing and memorial service, the funeral director can pick you and the casket lining out of the casket and ship you to the crematory.

joe
 
To each their own I guess, but I kind of have a reverence for headstones, whether it be the patriotic symbolism of walking through row after row in Arlington National Cemetery, or finding a small 3 grave site in the forests of Maine. But there is something neat about headstones...beyond the names and the dates and the fact that these people are all dead. You see between the date they were born, and the date they died there is a simple dash. For the stone masons that chiseled or sand blasted that dash in there, it took little time and was hardly artistic and yet it means so much, for that dash is that persons life.

Coming from a long line of family that has stayed in one town, the dashes are kind of cool. In some cemeteries we take up the entire cemetery, in others a large portion of the cemetery and yet in others we have but one or two family members there. But without question the dashes have produced more dashes and that is the most precious thing of all.

Whatever you do, make the most of your dash...you never know what the date will read on the right side of it.


You can still be buried at a cemetery and have a head stone with all the details after your cremaines come back from the oven.

Cremation burials happen all the time.

There are lots of ways of doing this. Viewing with body in tact, go to oven, then come back for burial.

Or cremation first, go back to funeral home for visitation, then a memorial service at the funeral home or church with an internment after the service.

joe
 
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