Notebook
I think it was former Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds who said in his resignation speech; “it is the little things that can trip you up”. I’m sure President Biden might agree. He mixed up the names of a few world leaders and it cost him his chance of a second term. But perhaps the incident also says something to us about the importance of names.
Names are very sacred and important and nowhere more so than in a place of remembrance like a cemetery. A short distance from where President Biden lives in Washington DC is the Vietnam War Memorial. The monument is a long black granite wall with thousands of names of those who lost their lives in the war.
On a visit a few years ago while walking slowly through the memorial a few things struck me. Firstly, it was the silence. Even though there were crowds of people a hushed reverence imbued the atmosphere.
Searching
Secondly, I noticed some people obviously searching for a particular name. When they found their loved one, they moved slowly as if approaching something very sacred and would then touch the name. As if to embrace their loved one, they very gently moved their fingers over the letters. Some just wept while others even knelt in prayer.
As I reflected on this scene and the sacred intimate rituals that were unfolding before my eyes, I wondered about the relationship that had existed between the living person and the name on the wall. It had to be very special, or it would not have created such a reaction.
There were hundreds of people at the memorial that day, most of them just spectators or tourists like me. They could touch lots of names and have no reaction whatsoever. But to others, those names, or rather, this name was a cause for emotion and many tears.
We are in the Cemetery Mass season or in some parts of the country it is simply called ‘the blessing of the graves’. Locally we have had four and another four to go. Whatever the ritual is called it brings hundreds of thousands of people from home and abroad to cemeteries all over Ireland every summer.
Masterminding
Pat McFadden is the political strategist from Glasgow credited with masterminding Labour’s landslide victory in the recent British General Election. After the election Mr McFadden when asked what his summer looked like he responded that the only definite plan was to be in Donegal for the Graveyard Mass where his ancestors are buried.
It all comes back to the name. The goal of the journey is to stand at the spot, marked by a stone slab which bears the name of a loved one buried there. Depending on how close the person visiting, and the person being visited are, and how long it has been since the death has taken place, seeing that name on the gravestone can be very emotional.
For many, going to a cemetery can be a comforting thing to do. It is a place where you can be close to your loved ones, to re-connect with them at the spot where you said a final farewell to them. For others, the visit can be painful and yet there is a compulsion, a summons to come.
During this summer of graveside remembrance rituals let us be conscious that, cemeteries are not just repositories of a community’s past. For Christians, they are also the cradle of our hopes as well. All these uniquely different, tombstones are signposts to eternal life. We therefore pray there for our dead – not in sorrow, but in anticipation. Our faith allows us to know that the death of those we love is not the end of their story or our relationship with them.
A Thought
“Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
…..Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.”
– Christina Rossetti
Confessions of a grandfather
“I know I shouldn’t have done this, but I am an 83-year-old grandfather and I was in the McDonald’s drive-through this morning and the young woman behind me leaned on her horn and started mouthing something because I was taking too long to place my order. So, when I got to the first window, I paid for her order along with my own. The cashier must have told her what I’d done, because as we moved up, she leaned out her window and waved to me and mouthed “Thank you.” obviously embarrassed that I had repaid her rudeness with kindness. When I got to the second window, I showed them both receipts and took her food too. Now she must go back to the end of the queue and start all over again.”
The moral of the story is…..Don’t blow your horn at old people, they have been around a long time.