Making jokes about dead people is considered disrespectful and traditionally frowned upon, but not in the small Romanian town of Sapanta. The villagers here have learned to embrace death with humor, as evident from the brightly colored tombstones in the local cemetery with epitaphs that often contain short funny rhymes full of wit and poking fun at the dead, telling their life stories or revealing their dirty secrets. One epitaph read:

"Underneath this heavy cross
Lies my mother in law poor
Had she lived three days more
I’d be here and she would read
You that are passing by
Try not to wake her up
For she comes back home
She’ll bite my head off
But I’ll act in the way
That she will not return
Stay here my dear
Mother-in-law."

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