THE SIGNPOST

Whenever I voiced a complaint, my father would say, “Put it on my epitaph.” In a more serious mood, he would speak about the importance of “leaving your mark.”

But soon before he died after a decade of illnesses, injuries, infections, and all manner of indignities they wrought on him, body and soul, he told his wife he simply wanted to be cremated; she intended to scatter his ashes by a tree on their property that he liked to gaze upon.

That didn’t seem right. Although neither burial nor stones are universal, a marker says “I was here” in a way that addresses a need, both for the one who is leaving and the ones left behind.

I called the cemetery where his parents and older brother were buried. Bruce Jaffe, the cemetery salesman, suggested affixing a bronze