My particular profession causes me to spend a lot of time in the cemetery. The messages on tombstones, especially in older cemeteries, never cease to fascinate me. Some are funny: “Here lies my wife, here let her lie, now she’s at peace and so am I.” Some are sad: “Here lies the body of a man who died; nobody mourned, nobody cried, how he lived, how he fared, nobody knows, nobody cared.” Some are tender: “Gracie Allen and George Burns Together Again.” Some are instructive: “My dear friends, as you pass by, as you are now, so once was I, as I am now, you soon must be, prepare yourselves to follow me.”

On every tombstone there is a birth date and a death date and a little dash separating the two. None of us had much to do with our birth. It just happened to us. We may have little to do with…