What to put on a headstone

A headstone is the most permanent thing a family will ever commission, and it is usually ordered in the worst month of their lives, from a catalogue, under time pressure.

Two things help: knowing how little text fits, and knowing what has to be approved.

How much actually fits

Far less than people imagine. A standard stone holds a handful of lines, often around forty to sixty characters each depending on the lettering and the size of the stone.

That means the usual content is:

• The name, as they were known. Nicknames are common and completely acceptable.
• Two dates. Years alone, or full dates. Write months in words if there is room.
• A relationship line. "Beloved wife, mother and grandmother." This is the line families argue about, because it decides whose relationship is named.
• One short line, if anything is left.

Everything else — a long tribute, a poem, a list of grandchildren — does not fit and is what the mason will gently tell you when you are already attached to it.

Choosing the one line

The good ones are short and specific. The weak ones are long and general.

Four approaches that work:

Something they said. A phrase the family knows. It needs no explanation on the stone; the people who understand it are the people who will stand there.

A description, not a virtue. "He kept bees" says more than "a devoted father", because it is only true of him.

A relationship stated plainly. "Together, and now together." For a couple in one plot.

A line from something they loved. Check copyright if it is modern — a mason will cut whatever you give them, but reproducing a copyrighted lyric on a public monument is reproduction.

Read it out loud. Then read it imagining you are eighty and standing there in the rain. Anything that sounds clever will not survive that test; anything plain will.

What needs approval

In most places you cannot simply order what you like.

Cemeteries and churchyards commonly have rules on the size, the material, the color of the stone and, frequently, on the wording. Churchyards in particular often approve inscriptions in advance, and the criteria can be conservative about humor, nicknames and anything not conventionally religious.

Ask for the regulations in writing before you design anything. A mason who works in that cemetery will usually know them, and asking them first is the whole trick.

The decisions you cannot undo

• Leaving room for a spouse. If the plot is for two, the layout has to reserve space now. It cannot be rearranged later.
• Spelling and dates. Check both against a certificate, not from memory. Errors are cut in stone and fixing them means a new stone.
• Material. Granite survives, limestone weathers and softens within decades. A softer stone is often the more beautiful choice and the one whose lettering disappears first.
• Anything attached. Photographs, ceramic portraits and QR codes are permitted in many cemeteries and forbidden in others. Ask before ordering, and prefer what can be removed over what cannot.

What does not fit on the stone

Everything else: the life, the photographs, the voice, what the grandchildren should know.

A headstone was never able to hold those, which is why families have always supplemented it — with a box of photographs, an album, a story told at a table. The only question worth asking is whether that supplement is somewhere the whole family can reach, or in one person's attic.