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Death has a funny way of governing our lives. We do not often like to acknowledge it, but we all have a time limit. We scramble to finish all that we dream to accomplish, but what happens when time is up? Will we be ceremoniously laid in velvet-lined coffins, lowered into the cold jowls of the earth, forgotten?
In Stones, by Michael Aaron Rockland, the dead live on in the memories and hearts of their family. It is a simple, yet powerful story about how one family’s past haunts their present and impacts their future.
It is the Jewish New Year, and narrator Jack Berke is busy ferrying his half-deaf, half-blind, handicapped mother, Rachel, around Long Island to visit the graves of their kin. According to Jewish custom, they recite the Kaddish, a mourning prayer, and place stones on top of the gravestone. Reflecting upon old memories, mother and son discover that the dead are much more alive than they seem. Each tombstone and its subterranean resident has a secret which has not died along with them.
The plot moves with a sublime grace and poise while building a subtle drama, told with an entertainingly cutting humor. As Jack unearths family scandals and hushed truths in the cold and quiet cemeteries, he solidly grounds the foundations of his own identity in a self-epiphanic journey.
Stones is a poignant tale about how death may not be the end after all — a message, which reverberates with a special wisdom even after closing its covers.
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