Memento Mori in art and as symbology for gravestones has been popular since the medieval times. If you stumble across these images of skull and crossbones, skeletons, or other images of death they might seem rather macabre and unnecessary.
However, memento mori carvings were profoundly meaningful, intended not for the deceased but as a reminder to the living that one day we will die and that we must guard against the sins of the flesh and the extravagances of material life. They were designed to spark an awareness that someday we too will not be here and therefore what do we want our lives to mean and how do we want to be remembered. In the Christian tradition these Memento Mori gravestones were seen as an admonition to all who walked by them to remember to follow the teachings of the Church, to remain on the straight and narrow and to live in a way that would lead to salvation in the hereafter.
The practice of Memento Mori can be traced back to even earlier times and is found in other spiritual and moral traditions across the ages. There are stories of slaves whose role it was to whisper ‘remember you will die’ to their Roman Generals during victory parades with the intention to prevent hubris (excessive pride or arrogance) from creeping in and making them act in ways that were not to the benefit of the empire.
It can also be traced back to Socrates and the Stoics, in the words of Marcus Aurelius ‘Do not act as if you were going to live then thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good”
Buddhism also has the practice of Maranasati, a mindfulness of death or death awareness. Within this tradition, it is seen as important to spend time meditating on the disintegration of your own body. Truly understanding the fragility and transience of the material body and coming to awareness that ‘You’ are not your body, arriving to the inner freedom experienced when fear of death is removed.
I know from personal experience how difficult it can be to contemplate our own mortality. Having worked for my family’s monumental masonry business I had some experience of being around death from an early age. However, it wasn’t until I learnt I had cancer at the age of 37 that I began to truly understand what it means to be aware of the fragility of life and the importance of using the time we have as well as we can.
I have noticed that many people who are drawn to work in the death industry, have experienced loss themselves. Travelling through dark and difficult times can sometimes give us the capacity to be of service to others suffering loss. It becomes less scary to be with those who are experiencing grief if we have looked into the abyss ourselves, spending time contemplating what it means to us and trying to find a way to be aware of our own process around the spectre of death can be liberating. If we do not find a way to do this, then it is much harder for us to not project our own fear onto those around us. In so doing we are less able to be present for others in their time of need.
My own journey with cancer, was not straight forward. The way it presented itself in my body was not typical and there wasn’t a known path that my doctors could confidently recommend. It was a scary time, but it led me to find out as much as I could about my illness. I decided on an integrative medical approach – a combination of conventional and holistic therapies. I also found myself deep diving into the practice of Memento Mori, contemplating what it was to know I was going to die, that my body was fragile and could let me down at any moment. I thought a lot about what it meant.
What if I couldn’t be around to raise my children (who were only 4 and 6 at the time). How would my husband and family cope without me? I read book after book on different spiritual traditions around death and dying. In the end, after a year of treatments, I decided that what I wanted to do with the time remaining to me was to spend as much of it as possible with the people who mattered the most to me. My husband, Adrian, began to manage the family memorial business and I took a step back from the everyday running of the business to focus on home educating our two boys.
During the next 8 years we had a wonderful time on our educational adventure, a story for another time perhaps, but it wasn’t always plain sailing. I had several recurrences and dealing with the fear and uncertainty that this brought up was an emotional roller coaster. The gift it gave though, was the incentive to travel deep and wide – trying to understand what it is to live a ‘good’ and meaningful life and trying to do my best to be present for it all.
I learnt to enjoy the small moments as well as the big – a walk on the beach with the wind in my hair – the smell of a good cup of coffee – the look on the boys faces when they learnt something new or the sound of their laughter when playing with friends. These little moments of joy are so easy to miss when our heads are in our phones, or we’re worrying about how to pay the next bill.
Thankfully, the cancer didn’t spread, and eventually the boys educational adventure took a turn down a different path. With lockdowns preventing us from running any of the educational groups that we had previously held at the farm, we all made the decision that it was the right time for them to have the opportunity to experience school life, and I was able to focus more on the business again.
Over the years, Adrian and I realised there was a need for a different approach to the memorialisation of life. We could see that there was a progressive movement within the death and dying industry being led by some wonderful people and we felt that it was important to also be able to approach the memorialisation of life in a more compassionate and heart centred way.
We worked together on a strategy for our business to integrate a unique holistic approach to creating memorials. An approach that combines the use of artistic expertise and artisan craftsmanship with compassionate bereavement support. In this way it is our mission to ensure that the commissioning of a headstone provides our clients with the chance to tell a story using personalisation and creativity. Through skilful craftsmanship our stonemasons tell the tale of the person whose life we are celebrating, creating a beautiful and meaningful memorial. The journey our clients go on with us is integral to our business, as we believe deeply in the importance of providing a space for catharsis and emotional support along the way.
When we took over the business in 2020, we began the process of rebranding the business from J. Rotherham to Mindful Memorials. This reflects our intention for what we want the business to represent going forward, balancing the principles and heritage skills set out by my grandfather Joseph Rotherham, whilst blending the much-needed holistic approach. As the practice of Memento Mori, being aware and mindful about death, was such an important part of our journey over the past 10 years, Mindful Memorials felt like the perfect name to take us onwards into the future.
Both Adrian and I feel so much gratitude to be able to do the work that we do. Mindful Memorials is making a difference to the experience our clients have when commissioning a memorial. We are working with the charity, Talking About Loss, providing many opportunities for bereavement support such as counselling, art therapy, mindful walking, coffee mornings and therapy taster days amongst many others. The amazing response we have had, and the feedback from our clients, has highlighted that this is an approach that is very much needed and appreciated and is spurring us on to look at ways of bringing our services to a wider audience.
We are looking at introducing Mindful Memorials retreats in the future. An opportunity for people to come and stay with us in our Airbnb cottages on the estate where our Masons Yard is located and spend time here working with our artists and designers whilst also being able to access bereavement support such as art therapy, mindful walking through the beautiful grounds, grief counselling and other support therapies.
More than anything, when contemplating Memento Mori, and the importance of how we use the time we have left positively, it seems crucial to me that whatever we choose to spend our time doing, should have something greater than our own material gain at heart.
Mindful Memorials, gives us the opportunity to work for something that is important, to support those who need us both within our communities and further afield. To really make a difference when it matters the most. Through honing our ability to understand that ‘we all must die’ it is possible to be able to forge a deeper connection with our clients and with each other. Every interaction becomes a profound opportunity to get beyond the mundane and to really ‘see’ each other.
Perhaps this is ultimately what Memento Mori offers us all. The chance to see that all we really need to do while we are here is to find a way to open our hearts to each other – to connect to what the Greeks described as Agape – compassionate and unconditional love – and from that our lives, and the lives of those we encounter, can be all the richer and more meaningful.
Anna lives in East Yorkshire with her husband, 2 boys and 3 cats.
Anna’s mission is to bring a passion for the creativity and skill of our ancient heritage skills to the creation of beautiful and meaningful memorials, providing bereavement support along the way to ensure that the journey provides an opportunity for emotional release and catharsis. And to create a community that can offer support, comfort, and connection for all those experiencing Loss.
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Anna is a trustee of the bereavement charity Talking About Loss – which you can learn more about here
To get in touch you can email anna@mindfulmemorials.co.uk
