Dear Friend,

In most areas of Greece it is common to exhume graves after a period of time. In Arfara, each of my four Aunts have been buried in the cemetery behind the village church. After a period of three years, they are exhumed and their bones are placed in a wooden or metal box called an ossuary. These boxes are then stacked in a building adjacent to the cemetery also called an ossuary. People still visit their loved ones in this building and light a candle for them. My Aunts Irene and Theodora both died in 2005 and are in the village ossuary while my Aunts Martha and Voula, having passed more recently, are still in the cemetery. The ossuary is a bit ominous as you first enter...going from the bright Mediterranean sun to a cool dark chamber filled with boxes and faces of the dead. But, there is still a sense of peace and reverence there. Every evening loved ones make their way up the hill to light a candle and hand-picked wildflowers can be found tucked among the boxes in their memory.

Loved ones also visit the cemetery in the evening to light oil lamps and incense. Oil lamps are filled with olive oil and a new wick is added to a piece of cork allowing the oil to burn slowly. For the incense, a round disk of charcoal is lit and small bits of fragrant incense are added. The burning of incense is symbolic in that smoke only ever travels upward toward heaven. Many people visit their loved ones nightly and the white marble cemetery is dotted with black clothes of mourning as the sun begins to set.

XOXO,

Karen June