Tombstones and resurrection

Stained glass, St Thomas A Beckett, Pagham, West Sussex

Walking amongst the old tombstones of ancient Sussex churches, primroses, yellow and purple magnolia blossoms blooming in the Spring sunlight, I am a sacred fool talking to the dead. Remembering those that worked and walked alongside my Sussex ancestors. They live amongst us, more quiet now but ever watchful.

For some, their voices still come knocking loudly, reborn in the generations they have spawned. Francis Robbie, 18th Century Scottish adventurer, blacksmith, farmer, soldier. He outlived three wives, his second my great grandmother five times over Elizabeth Moon, the black blood vomit of the yellow fever caking her dead lips in Haiti. Their granddaughter in law, Marion Barker Robbie comes galloping over the green grass hills straight from Aberdeen asylum to tell me that my distant cousin is looking.for her birth father's family, having only just found him, though already dead. We start sharing Robbie stories and our ancestors jump for joy, as do we - such healing in this new found cousin connection.

I light a candle in front of a weeping Magdalene at the foot of the cross, glorious in stained glass, her golden pot of healing balm shimmering in the sunlight. There she is in glass again, this time in the garden. Rabboni!

"My dearest darling, don't touch my Ka. I have not yet ascended."

He is still transmuting from this world to the next. The energetic body that leaves its traces amongst us.

Elizabeth Bradwell too has come knocking at my door this Easter, in the form of a medicine spoon memorial for the English women hung, burnt or drowned in the witchunts of the 1600s. Elizabeth was executed in Great Yarmouth by Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled Witchfinder General, for consorting with the Devil and talking to her blackbird familiar. I know that Norfolk portside as my husband, also a Matthew, is Yarco born.

Elizabeth has come for the healing balm, her Ka still crazy after all these centuries craving release. I have the honour of stitching her name with pride as part of a collective rebirth for all those women, mainly in menopause, who were so wronged.

We stumble on through the tombstones of Bognor, derelict and deserted by their families, but their occupants are happy to see us. We can't find Lucy May Penderill-Mackenzie, perhaps because her story has too many shadows yet to be released. We pay our respects to the Laird of Glack who has landed a very long way from Aberdeen. He is joyful to be found and in doing so is again reborn.

The blackbird sings, the robin sings, the crow croaks as new life rings in the gold. Last night the blood red sky lingered over the Downs, a reminder.of the blood sap rising through my veins.

Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Marion, Magdalene and Lucy May, these are majestic women moving through the long grass. These women carrying their wounds and their ointments for application, for supplication, for their voices to be heard, refuse to be forgotten.

We hear you

Tell us more with your

red lipped tongues

white teeth whistling

over black feathered gowns

golden cups brimming

with honeyed chants

and songs of newness

The old becomes

the new becomes

the old once more.

I plant my staff in the ground and climb into the sky.

Stained glass, St Mary’s Church, Barcombe, East Sussex