There’s nothing grave about these inscriptions.

“He was a big golfer — but never as successful as he hoped,” said Carole Cheskin, the widow of the recently deceased Joel.

As fate would have it, the son was the next of kin, so he was the one who bought the headstone and ordered this epitaph in the lower right corner: “RIHC.”

Lewis recalled an exchange with the son: “He told me, ‘It’s a personal expression that my mother and I always use and it’s very important to me.’ He said, ‘It means ‘Rest in Heaven,’ ” with the C standing for the mom’s first initial.

But after the marker was put up in a Queens cemetery, Lewis said, he received a call from a family lawyer angry over the acronym.

Inscriptions must be approved by a cemetery before work begins on the tombstone — and cemeteries reserve the right to reject them for any reason, according to Dennis Werner, president of the Metropolitan Cemetery Association.

“He wants, ‘Father of four wonderful daughters and a lying son,’ ” Levy said. “His daughter said, ‘Just give him what he wants, and afterwards I’ll change it.’ ”

Earthly passions often follow people to the grave. In the last week of 71-year-old Joel Cheskin’s life, he told his wife, Carole, what he wanted on his gravestone: “At Last a Hole in One.”

“He was a big golfer — but never as successful as he hoped,” the widow said. “He was a man with a wry sense of humor.”

“I was kind of surprised, but I liked it, so I decided that on mine, I’m going to get, ‘I’m with Him,’ with an arrow pointing to Joel,” she said. “He would appreciate that.”