Not too long ago I found a post that I had started but never finished on the use of sleep as a metaphor for death in epitaphs. Most of them seem to invoke the Christian idea of eventual resurrection. The comforting reassurance to her children that she merely sleeps here might not have the same feeling if we couldn’t assume a Christian frame of reference.
The Bowler-Burdick monument reads “He giveth his beloved sleep.”
Of course, sleeping implies a transitory state that will end with an awakening (or reawakening), made explicit in the Pankhurst epitaph.
A Grave Concern 