Whispers of Time: The churchyard at St Wyllow, Lanteglos-by-Fowey

Whispers of Time: The churchyard at St Wyllow, Lanteglos-by-Fowey

This is a liminal place. A shiver in time. A quiet pause in a whirling world, one reached only by narrow lane and bramble choked path, and where visitors seldom linger. Here the heavy weight of grief is lifted by years. Names, once spoken with love and uttered for one last time by grief clotted voices, are rain smoothed echoes soothed by smudges of moss.

As I trail the strimmed paths, stooping now and then to decipher faded inscriptions, it occurs to me that the graveyard is not a place to mourn. I am not fearful of these sleepers long lost to memory and who repose beneath grassy mounds or within railed plots. It is a place where time exists without urgency. A pause in a racing world. A place of mental elbow room where the restless heart learns to breathe with the rhythms of nature, and where grief’s serrated edge becomes smooth as the worn stones.

I wander among the headstones, each one testament to lives once lived and lost to memory. The soft Cornish rain and salt sharp wind has erased many names, but occasionally a line or a word shifts and swims into focus, rendering the old loss is immediate once more.

Beautiful. Beloved. Brief.

This old grief is still fresh enough to punch the breath away. My throat tightens. The stone, though worn and cracked, still holds the yawning chasm that once glimpsed can never be unseen. A twig snaps. I straighten up, pulse beating like the wings of the black bird that explodes from the undergrowth, and I am surrounded by stones lean inwards as though watching. See us. Listen to us. Learn from us.

It seems to me that these stones, like those placed in thin places by ancient people long lost to time, hold power. They know more than any sage or search engine for their knowledge not of the intellect, but of the soul—quiet, eternal, and unchanging. They have stood witness to decades, to centuries, yet wear their wisdom with a silent grace and acceptance. They have learned to let go, to surrender to the inevitable flow of life and death. The lesson is, I think as I brush a lichened angel’s cheek with my fingertips, to listen to them. There is a peace in realising the fight is futile and tranquillity in seeing a pattern.

I exhale slowly, feeling the soft weight of the stillness pressing inwards. The birds sang from hidden places, their song a sweet harmony that fills the air, and I feel the touch of a memory stir, an innate memory that whispers in the long grass and is familiar as the breath. These memories of a time when the world was younger, and these stones still held their sharp edges and their inscriptions where as sharp as the biting wind, are not mine. They belong to the churchyard and the land. They belong to whatever was here long before St Wyllow paused to drink from the stream and stayed to build a hermitage. And now they belong to me.

Lichen blooms on the stones. Primroses and bindweed replace wreaths, growing wild and untamed and their beauty a quiet testament to the life that continues, even when all else seems bleak and hopeless. A stray daffodil nods dreamily by one headstone, returning faithfully each spring and planted with such hope. Wild garlic musters in the shaded corners where the most ancient stones slip into the soil. Soon to star  deep green with white, it will tempt foragers into the lonely shadows and visit the forgotten sleepers.

Although the headstones vary in size and their ornate nature there is no rank here, just the softening touch of time filling the chasm of loss with the grace of decades. In the deep purple cool of the stooped hawthorne hedge, ancient stones slump beneath gnarled trees. Knotted roots entwined with the essence of those long gone as the earth, which once staggered with the weight of hearts breaking, cradles the dead in its arms.

Sone may see the churchyward as a place of death but life teems here. Ivy creeps slowly over the stones, her progress patient and steady, as though she knows that nothing lasts forever but everything has its place in the great tapestry of being. Snails pause for a breathe in a marathon trek across the rough path. A buzzard soars above. Something unseen rustles in the brambles. A bird’s tremulous note fills the air, heartbreakingly lovely and fleeting. The song repeats itself season after season—each note the same, yet never quite the same, for life is always shifting, always moving forward, even as it treads the same ground. We are the same. Unique yet following a pattern that has existed for as long as people looked up at the stars or reached out to touch a loved one’s hand or wipe away a tear.

A tractor tills the soil nearby in readiness for spring sowing, a reminder of a world that continues to turn even as hearts break and memories fade. The nodding horses that once trod the plough are as forgotten as the half-remembered names etched on the stones, no more that dreams of an age so distant it feels little more than a story. A lone robin watches me. Its black eyes are inscrutable and hold mine. Every feather is still. I am reminded of old wives’ tales about such birds. I look away first and turn with a shiver to retrace my steps.

I pass through the lychgate and wander back into the lane. The farmhouse

opposite basks in the sunshine, a pair of chickens scratch in the earth and a sleek tabby cat watches me through narrowed eyes. Daily life continues, but the thought remains that I am ephemeral.

We are all dandelion seeds. We have a brief tumble in the wind. A flicker in eternity, a shiver in time.  In a world turned upside down the ancient tomb stones are guardians. They are sentinels. And they are reminder that even when all else in gone the fact that we were loved will remain.