Remember the scene in Schindler’s List where admirers placed stones on the gravesite of Schindler to memorialize his courageous act of rescuing condemned Jews from the Nazis? I’ve seen that gravesite in Jerusalem and added a stone to the pile which lives atop his grave stone. It is a common practice among Jews to honor deceased persons by building a cairn, a pile of stones, at the place of their burial. It is meant to be a sign of the permanence of the respect held for the person. Symbolically, the stone…the rock…will not disappear with the abuses of age or weather. It is considered disgraceful to remove a stone from a memorial cairn.
At the same time, a cairn is a pile of stones placed along a trail as a marker to assist the hiker in staying the course. It is particularly helpful where a trail separates, and it is important to note the correct route. No language need confuse the hiker. The cairn speaks its message in an international and barrier-free language.
When you stop to think about it, both uses share a common meaning. To follow the way of a respected, but deceased, leader is similar to following the way of a respected and trusted pioneer who has set the trail. In a sense, the erection of a granite grave stone is a variation on the same theme. Its permanence is implied by its stone content.
In Judaism there is a respected ceremony at the time of the placing of the grave stone. In other religious traditions the burial rite is the culmination of the honoring of the dead. But in Judaism the memorializing of the honored dead is a big deal. Notices appear in the newspaper about the date, time and location of the unveiling of the stone. Family members and loved ones gather to commit the memory of the loved and respected one to the ages. Perhaps a pebble or two is placed atop it that day, or maybe in the days following when visitors seek out the spot and pause to remember.
In graduate school we lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, in a tiny apartment which overlooked a historic cemetery. It was awesome to walk through that cemetery and visit the sites of Emily Dickinson, the poet; the original Cassius Clay (not Mohammed Ali,) one of the founders of this nation; and other historic figures. Their stone markers are signs of the respect with which they are held by thousands, perhaps millions, of people who have sought them out and cannot resist the urge to touch them.
Remembering needs a stone. The human mind is limited by death. The stone surpasses that limitation and continues the story.
In a sense, a written story is a cairn, placed to show the way and to honor the life of the story. It must be placed with care and with respect. Its permanence depends upon the hardness of the stone, and that is determined by the care with which the writer creates the story.
Photo Credit: Ryan Jordan
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for your words, Betty. Our experience on Mt. Washington means that you have to include that horrible word, “snow”, as well as fog or clouds. However, the likelihood of hiking during snow season is minimal. What a magnificent place.
Love this. I was aware of “cairn” in only the hiking sense. Atop Mt. Washington, for one, cairns are critical to finding one’s way through the fog … or clouds, as the case may be But the idea of a cairn as a memorial (a pile of remembrance) is really lovely. And stretching that to include the notion of a story is lovely, too. Thanks for enriching the word’s meaning.