Markings

What is being written in the dash?

“Here lies the body of Solomon Pease
Under the daisies and under the trees
But Pease isn’t here, only the pod
Pease shelled out and went home to God!”

That old New England epitaph, whether preserved in stone or passed along through the folklore of graveyard humor, says more than its rhyme first suggests.

The body remains.

The person has gone.

The pod is there.

The Pease has shelled out.

There is something wonderfully comic and deeply serious about that. Humor has often been one of the ways human beings tell the truth when the truth is too large to say plainly. We laugh because we know. We laugh because the grave is real. We laugh because we hope the grave is not the last word.

Solomon understood human mortality as well as any man who ever lived. He meditated often on the fleeting glory of riches, the limits of wisdom, the weariness of human striving, and the frailties that come with age.

Ecclesiastes will not let us pretend forever.

Youth passes.

Strength weakens.