"Two Hearts Forever", and each person's
birth and death dates in separate or entwined hearts are
a very common sight in the cemeteries my students visit.
Most of my students don't like the "pre-need" markers where one of the death dates is left off because the person is not dead yet. What if the surviving spouse marries again?
In answer to that question, here is some email I received from a widow: "In the process of searching the web to get ideas for a grave marker for my husband (died 2/22/97), I came across your site. Although I'm still hoping to find something with more pictures, sketches, etc., I found your site to be very interesting and informative. I was particularly struck by the uneasiness your students expressed with the "pre-need" marker, and wanted to respond. (This has also been a topic of discussion in an on-line widow's support group.) Although I have not yet chosen the exact marker I want, I am definitely having my name added even though it is very possible, and maybe even probable, that I will not be buried there. I think of the markers as visible records of a person's life. Regardless of what happens to me and where I end up being buried, I want that form of record that I was married to my husband at the time of his death."
If you are in the cemetery for several hours, you have
time to really look at each headstone and "do the
math." In 1929, at the age of 50, the woman on the
right lost her ten year old daughter (pictured on the
left, in her First Communion dress). The mother lived
with this loss until she herself died at age 99. The
epitaph reads, "Forever In Our Hearts."