Can an epitaph to a cross-word addict be more appropriate than 6 DOWN?
Epitaphs need not necessarily be grim and melancholic.

On the other hand they can be, and possibly should be, jolly, clean fun— a tribute to the sense of humour of a person who has passed on or of his surviving kin.

Some very sentimental epitaphs are to be found in old English churchyards and they are full of literary and poetical imagery and allegories. Can an epitaph be more touching than this?

“This spot is the sweetest I’ve seen in my life
For it raises my flowers and covers my wife.”

When the famed artiste Sir Joshua Reynolds died, William Blake wrote the following epitaph—

“When Sir Joshua Reynolds died
All nature was degraded
The King dropped a tear into the Queen’s ear
And all his pictures faded.”

William Blake again wrote the following self-epitaph, a pastime popular in literary and artistic circles.

“I was buried near this dyke
So that my friends may weep as much as they like”

Benjamin Franklin took time off from his multifarious activities to come up with—

“Here lies Skugg
Snug as a bug in a rug.”

Lawyers who value their reputation for veracity might be displeased at the following epitaph for one of their kind—

“Beneath this smooth stone, by the bone of his bone
Lies Mr Jonathan Small
By lies did this attorney thrive when alive
And now that he’s dead, he lies still.”

A tenderly sentimental epitaph in the Sutton parish churchyard reads—

“God took our flower, our little Nell
He thought he too would like a smell.”
For limerick fans, here’s one to delight—
“There was an old man who averred
That he had learned to fly like a bird

Cheered by thousands of people
He leapt from the steeple
This tomb states the date it occurred.”
or

“There was a young lady in the choir
Whose voice rose higher and higher
Until one Sunday morning
It rose quite out of sight
And they found it the next morning on the spire”

Lloyd Georbe, being a true politician, suggested that the following epitaph be inscribed on his tomb upon his death—

“Count not his broken promises as a crime
He MEANT them
How he meant them at the time.”

John Dryfen wrote the following epitaph-epigram for his wife—

“Here lies my wife
Here let her lie
Now she’s at rest
So am I.”

One presumes that Dryden’s married life must have been a stormy one.
Another epitaph for a shrewish woman in a similar vein—

“Here lies, thank heaven
A woman who stormed her way through
Tread lightly over her slumbering form
For fear you raise another storm.”

For the ubiquitous chatter-box what better an epitaph than—

“Beneath this stone, a lump of clay
Lies Arabella Young
Who on May 2, 1771
Finally learned to hold her tongue.”

Epitaph to a dentist

“Stranger! approach this spot with gravity
John Brown is filling his last cavity.”
Mr John Ford must have been a tyrant all right seeing that the following is the epitaph on his wife’s tomb—
“Here lies Mary, the wife of John Ford
We hope that her soul has gone to the Lord
But if for hell she has changed her life
She better be there than be John Ford’s wife.”

Our roads are menaced by speed maniacs and here’s an epitaph to one such, written no doubt by a long suffering pedestrian—

“He passed the bobby without any fuss
He then passed a cart of hay
He tried to pass a swerving bus
And then he passed away.”

Here’s an epitaph for a young lady with none of the modern fads about looking slim and svelte and to be sure, she weighed 12 stones 10 when she died.

“Here lies Mary Ann
Safe at last on Abraham’s breast
Which might be nuts for Mary Ann
But is certainly hard on Abraham.”

To conclude, an epitaph for the contemporary times we live in—

“Here lies an Astronomer
Who while watching the Sky
Was hit by the falling Lab”.