ShareThisOn occasions when I'm invited to lead a retreat, I set aside some time for each participant to compose his or her epitaph. The idea is to express the wisdom each of us has gleaned from life.
Unfortunately, many of us are so preoccupied with daily living that we resist putting into words the things we have valued and the persons we loved during our earthly sojourn.
It's a Hollywood tradition that the hero or villain uses his dying breath to state his case. But in real life few of us can predict when it will be time for our last words.
Jesus of Nazareth was a notable exception, because his enemies chose his time to die. On Good Friday each year, churches around the world recall his seven last words of forgiveness and compassion.
The last words of other prisoners are seldom as poignant as those of the Christ. There have been 16,000 executions in America since pre-colonial times. The convicts' final words only rarely express regret for their crimes. Aubrey Adams was an exception. As he faced his execution in 1989, he said, "My death is the Lord's will and I am now with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in heaven."
Offered a final request before he was executed by firing squad in Utah in 1960, James Rodgers chose humor rather than regret. "Why, yes," he told his executioners, "a bulletproof vest."
Asked the same question in the gas chamber in Arizona in 1936, Jack Sullivan replied, "You might get me a gas mask."
Robert K. Elder, an Illinois journalism professor, spent seven years compiling the last words of the 16,000 prisoners executed in the U.S. since colonial times. They are now collected in his book, "Last Words of the Executed" (University of Chicago Press).
"There is no way words can express how sorry I am for taking the lives of my babies," said Christina Riggs before her lethal injection in Arkansas in 2000. In Texas the following year, Gerald Mitchell addressed the mother of a boy he had shot. "I am sorry for the life I took from you," he said.
But Timothy McVeigh voiced no such regret when he faced lethal injection for killing 168 people with a homemade bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995. Instead, he recited William Ernest Henley's poem, "Invictus." "I am the captain of my soul," he told his executioners.
In his foreword to Elder's book, the late Studs Terkel reminds readers that the U.S. is "the only industrial country in the world that still retains the death penalty," yet our murder rate surpasses that of any comparable nation.
Some prisoners on death row meet their demise with minor annoyance. Thomas Grasso, for example, complained only about his last meal. "Tell the media I did not get my SpaghettiOs," he demanded.
(David Yount's latest book is "Making a Success of Marriage" (Rowman & Littlefield). He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount31(at)verizon.net.)
AMAZING GRACE
