LÁMH     FOIS      TENACHABÚ    

LÁMH    FOIST-     ENACH    ABÚ   

​‘The surface of this headstone is breaking up into large, thin flakes, peeling away and exposing the softer layer beneath. In the damp fissure between the two, black mould has found lodging. The texture of the spalling stone is so unusual that I can’t resist reaching out and touching it lightly with my fingertips, and to my horror the phrase Loving Memory falls off in one piece onto the grass.
 
Sandstone is particularly prone to this kind of weathering, where moisture seeps between the layers; either rising, wicked up, from the earth beneath like drink through a straw, or hurled at the face of the stone as rain, freighted with windborne salt or acid. Sometimes the entire surface is sloughed in a single sheet, the stone underneath still bearing the shape of the letters and images carved through from above. A bad case of spalling can erase the inscription, like an attack of total amnesia.’
 
Jean Sprackland – These Silent Mansions: A Life in Graveyards

​‘There are three deaths. The first when the body ceases to function. The second when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time’
 
David Eagleman -  Sum: Forty Tales From The Afterlives