I hadn’t cleaned the altar in my bedroom for years. Let’s face it, no altar here just a place to collect objects given to me that had sacred meaning and dust… lots of dust. It felt good and necessary to clear away the old at the turn of the new year. I was even ready to let go of figures and stones that had once belonged to my late wife Terry.
It was just time.
One pile of photos to go on the family altar in the living room, one pile of branches and dried flowers to toss outside, one pile of detritus for the garbage can, and one pile of sparkling gems, rocks and religious statues.
“Truly, will you take these things out to Momma’s gravesite and decorate it with them? You can even take the bowl too, it will gather and hold water for the birds and insects in the Spring.”
”Sure!” Truly is always ready to add flowers or a bit of bling to the Sister-stone we have in the back yard.
I’ve written about the Sister-stone several times since we had it made along with the stone laying at her gravesite in California. I knew we would never live close enough to the cemetery where she was buried to visit her often. Being a natural burial her headstone needed to look like it belonged in nature. It sat low and squat, rounded and tan with lettering and the figure of a hummingbird engraved on it. We had two made so we could have a stone to carry with us wherever we lived. Its first home was out the back door of our homestead, now it sits at the foot of a large flat stone in our back yard.
It has become not only a place to honor her on Mothers day or her birthday, but also a place to go to speak to other beloved departeds. It has also become a place to bury our pets, sometimes a LOT of pets as I wrote about in Dog Fish Guinea Pig Funeral:
The beauty of the Sister-stone, what I love so much about it, is the graceful way it brings the presence of the well-departed into our daily lives. When we’re out back playing with the dog or eating a meal at the picnic bench in the summertime, the family gravesite is right there. There is no stress about it. We are not overly reverent. It is just a place to remember and feel what we need to feel in the moment.
Several months ago I found myself missing our dog Bella. I knew I had more grief to feel for her, but it was taking its own sweet time to surface. Our soil is too rocky to bury a body as big as hers, so we had her cremated and spread some of her ashes and then covered them with the Sister-stone. That day, at sunset I took two large candles out to the gravesite and lit them for her, telling her how much I missed her and how much she meant to all of us. I went back inside to get dinner going, watching the candles slowly burn down as the Autumn high desert night engulfed the land. I returned in darkness to put out the last candle and sit with my grieving heart.
There was a time when most of us Americans lived in rural settings and maintained gravesites on our own land. More formal, public graveyards grew as urban life grew to the point where public cemeteries were needed. Over time it became impractical for many to bury their loved ones at home. We became mobile for work. Property lines shrunk, deeds changed hands too frequently.
The presence of death continued its steady march out of our daily lives to be contained in special places and rarified moments.
People write about stumbling across old gravesites on their properties even today. Most of the posts Google pulls up are concerning the legality of moving or changing an old family burial site. While these laws have nuances from state to state the general theme seems to be - don’t mess with other peoples graves. I think thats a good thing. I like that we still have some respect for the dead.
Our gravesite has no bones buried beneath the headstone, other than those of some tropical fish and several Guinea Pigs. That doesn’t seem to make too much difference to us. It’s still a place where we can feel her presence, talk to Grandpa, and lay flowers on special occasions.
I think we need more gravesites like these scattered throughout our country. Maybe you would consider building one in your world?
We don’t all have yards. What about gravesites in public spaces? We’ve all become used to small crosses at the side of the road to mark where a traffic accident occurred. Would it be so strange to come across a small pile of stones with a few photos and flowers while walking through a wildlands park? Maybe this is where you remember a friend or your beloved Dog who always loved that place.
Would it be weird to visit a friend at their home and find them in their front garden, beside a Sister-stone having a conversation with their late Grandparent or the child who died in birth? Can we stand to see the reminders of life’s impermanence every day?
I think we make the world a safer, more whole place when we carry the presence of our departed loved one’s with us. These signs, these burial sites don’t last forever. Our Sister-stone will eventually wear down to the point where we can no longer make out her name. Maybe it will crack when we move to new property.
But its presence is indelible already in our lives, especially my children’s lives. They carry the Sister-stone in their hearts.
I hope some day to be able to walk around our community with flowers as Dios De Los Muertos approaches. We could stop at the many houses that have re-established family gravesites at their homes and make offerings of flowers, blessings and prayers if they are welcome. Maybe then our neighborhoods would feel more like homes than just places where we come and go.
Share this post