It’s Only a Rock (but it’s so much more)

51 years and four days after my younger sister Debra was stillborn, I visited her grave for the third time in five years.  I’m not sure I’d been there beforehand in any capacity.

On the previous two occasions, I had struggled to locate the actual grave plot as not all the plots are marked, and Debbie’s wasn’t.  It’s how things were done in the remote Pilbara region in the early 1970s.  I think vandalism was the concern in that day.

Through piecing together some information I received from my father after my mother died in 2022, I was able to locate Debbie’s grave.  The moment is captured in this video I took on a brief break taken during a work trip as I travelled by car from Port Hedland to Karratha.  The rock I refer to in the video that marks Debbie’s grave isn’t the rock pictured, but they are strangely similarly shaped from memory.  

One of the things that sets the beautiful Pilbara region apart is its rocks.  There are trillions of them—huge ones that nobody could lift.  

The rock pictured is just a rock.  But it’s not just any old rock.  It was a prominent rock atop my sister’s grave.  And I like to think it was there a long time—who knows, maybe many or nearly all those days since Debbie was placed there in late September 1973.

Having this rock in my possession is like having a piece of my sister—something so proximal to where her little physical body lay for over half a century.

When we lose our loved ones they’re gone forever but they’re never closer in our hearts.  This is why grief is so intractably hard!  We can no longer have what we would give anything to hold for five-minutes more.  

Dad and I shared a lunch where I talked about the little rock I took from Debbie’s grave.  He recounted the day she was buried, and it was little more than a burial with 4 or perhaps 5 people present, Dad, a couple close to Mum and Dad, and those there in an official capacity—town undertaker.  We talked about this, and many other related things, including his pride for his sons, my two brothers and me.  Dad talked about a song that was very important to Mum—James Blunt’s, “Monsters”.  We talked intimately about what this means to us as father and son.  It also reminded me of this (“A closer relationship with Dad… through loss”) that I wrote in 2022 before Mum died.  Mum introduced us to the song on January 19, 2020.  

To have these moments means the world to me.  These are eternal moments.  They’re eternal because without them, eternity separates us upon death.  We never imagine quite how much we will miss our loved ones until they’re truly gone.

To have their words, their sentiments, and for them to have ours, these are ‘possessions’ that transcend every physical possession known to existence.  These are ‘possessions’ of soul and spirit, for they surpass anything else we can otherwise own.

These are moments so many families and individuals don’t get.  Either the time isn’t made or taken, or people are too scared to get vulnerable, or people don’t even think about it until it’s too late, there just isn’t the opportunity.  And the truth is, we all have regrets, because there are always moments we could have had but didn’t get or take.

This is why I love being a pastor and chaplain.  Today I got to visit a man who’s dying.  It was his 75th birthday.  His whole family doubted he would make it to this milestone.  To be invited into the inner sanctum of their family, bedside with him, is absolutely the most sacred thing, a divine encounter without any doubt.

Time is a very strange dimension.  Most of life can seem boring or a drag.  But once time’s up, it’s gone.  Forever.  It might just be a rock, but this rock is a reminder of the one I never got to meet, who, by God’s grace, is now reunited with the matriarch of our family—her own mother.  

Is there someone you can tell today, that you’re proud of them, that you love them, that you believe in them?  I’ve got four children I’m proud of, love, and believe in.  I would want them to know.  Telling them once isn’t enough.  We need to be constantly told and encouraged.  Take the time.  Take the opportunity.

I urge you before it’s too late!