The Stones Hold Our Memories

While many traditions are fading, Memorial Day here in Canandaigua, New York is still celebrated even among younger people and even during Covid. At physical therapy today, I heard young staffers talking about their experience leaving flowers on graves already marked by veterans with small flags. I also made a pilgrimage to spruce up my family’s plot, straighten the big central urn and add flowers. Then, last Sunday, friends and I attended a Peony Garden Festival near where I lived as a child. I was moved by the stone sculpture and old fountain in front of the tiny chapel on the premises. While it is hardly Stonehenge, the power of the archetypal standing stone caught my eye.

I may not have been able to go to Ireland this spring, but I was able to practice my buttercup ritual to honor those who have passed there. It’s an original ritual of remembering those who have passed which I describe l in my book Amidst the Stones and tell of conducting it while at Drombeg Stone Circle. If you look closely at the picture above, you can see the buttercups floating in the pool of water.

Pausing in silence and connecting to our memories through the four elements, especially stones and water is an age- old tradition. When we are still and  let the voices of the stones carry us into stories, into our stories and the stories of our family, we are gifted with teachable moments and a sense of ancestral/familial support that is rich and meaningful. By extension, walking through the oldest section of a cemetery or strolling up to a park monument, gives us an opportunity to imagine the lives led by people whose names are carved in their stones- a humbling and moving experience.

There is something about stone that holds the vibration of the past better than any other material. As I have mentioned from descriptions of my visits to ancient standing stones and stone circles, there is a palpable vibration to the ancient stone monuments that evokes a connection to olden times, to time eternal. Today, I read in my college alumni magazine of the past of a professor who led a course entitled “Stepping Stones”. His field of concentration was Arabic literature and he taught religion. I am so curious to know if he included Celtic stone circles as part of his curriculum. The article did mention that he took students to the cemetery adjacent to the campus to walk among the stones.

A silly Facebook question today was “would you want to go back to an earlier time in your life?”. I skimmed over it, but remember thinking yes, college or even high school. And this professor’s class is just one reason. So many things yet to learn, much newly discovered or now better understood.

And I also would like to go back to earlier times: the meeting of Fredrick Douglas and Susan B Anthony, both now buried in that cemetery adjacent to my college cemetery; the formation of Stonehenge, or life amidst the stones of Celtic Ireland on which I based my novel.

So if you have the chance, I invite you to imagine yourself walking in the family cemetery or a familiar park with statues or ornamental rocks, or just a simple stone path. What memories- real or imagined- are evoked?

 With love and gratitude to our ancestors, let every day be Memorial Day.