Can You Uncover The Secret Code?

I've gleaned yet another goodie from the Snopes archives. This one was way too good not to pass on.

You won't win anything, but you'll certainly get a little chuckle. See if you can spot the acrostic.



The actual text:
Free your body and soul
Unfold your powerful wings
Climb up the highest mountains
Kick your feet up in the air
You may now live forever
Or return to this earth
Unless you feel good where you are

Missed by your friends

This is indeed a photograph of the headstone marking the spot where John Laird McCaffery (15 October 1940 - 14 August 1995) lies buried in Section C, Plot #01369 of Montreal's Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges. (The headstone is not, as claimed in the message quoted above, in Mount Royal Cemetery -- Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges and Mount Royal Cemetery are adjacent but separate facilities.) Like most cemeteries, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges has rules regarding what may or may not be engraved on tombstones displayed there, so a pejorative sentiment such as the one shown here could only be expressed in surreptitious fashion.

Who penned Mr. McCaffery's unusual epitaph, and why, is something of a mystery. The Montreal Mirror found the man who engraved the headstone but were only able to determine that:

The cryptic message occurred to the monument maker after he finished sandblasting it into stone. "Afterwards, as I'm done, I'm looking at it and I’m like, 'Wow.' I noticed it just like that," says John, whose full name won’t be published here for professional reasons. "This guy's ex-wife and mistress came in together and ordered the stone. They said the message represented him. It was a thing between the three of them," says John, who notes that the only other such hardy-har headstone he's been hired to write says: "I'd rather be in Boston but my wife buried me here."