Whispers of Old Bones: Remembering Ancestors and Unearthing Their Stories

How do we remember those who came before us? How do we remember our ancestors?  

The wild mint blows in the breeze as I sit on the steps of an abandoned stone house at the end of a street where my great-grandparents lived. It’s at the top of a tiny Italian hilltop village, at the end of a street that disappears over a cliff. It is at this cliff where bones gone to dust were cast away when the village graveyard became too full. A clattering of bones. Is that perhaps what a pile of bones is called?

The older I get the more interested I am in old bones, the more interested I am in my people, in those who came before me. It’s their stories I want, their wisdom. 

I feel the answers to my questions ring through the night, bouncing off the cliff in this mountainous region that holds the bones of this land; stories that live in my heart. 

Reaching for the mint, I loop scented tendrils around my fingers like rings. In that moment I notice what I am doing: tending. I am tending to an ancestral altar. In being present with what is passed I am able to notice what is arising within me. And ever so briefly, I catch that in between moment of quiet wisdom. And love. Love across generations. 

What are the ways in which you tend to your ancestors? What are the ways you tend to your memories?