This is a real gravestone in Georgetown, Massachusetts at Harmony Cemetery.
David Brockelbank was my father, and he was a pretty funny guy. He was also eternally young… and had kind of a Peter Pan outlook on life. He left our family when I was 10 and I didn’t see him for a long time. But as an adult, we rekindled our relationship and I was finally able to get to know him.
He served in the Navy on the aircraft carrier U.S.S Randolph from 1954-1958. During his service, his superior officers had difficulting pronouncing his name, and it was summarily shortened to “BROCK”, which stuck with him for the rest of his career, wherever he went.
After he retired, he began to do community service. As a shy guy, this made him noticeable to others and attracted praise, and it made him a little uncomfortable to be the center of attention. When receiving a compliment, he would typically say, “I owe it all to sardines.” Once he got older and started to sense his own mortality, he told me, “they should put that on my tombstone.”
After years of hearing this, I began to counter with, “You do know that you are speaking to the one person in the world who can make that wish come true?” He would just laugh.
You can see the result. I made sure that my very funny dad dad got to have the last laugh in a very permanent way.
Author’s Note: As a little girl, he used to chase me around the kitchen with a sardine.
