Dear Ancestor:

Your tombstone stands among the rest, neglected and alone -

The name and date are chiseled out on polished marbled stone.

It reaches out to all who care, It is too late to mourn,

You did not know that I exist, You died and I was born.

Yet each of us are cells of you in flesh, in blood, in bone -

Our blood contracts and beats a pulse, entirely not our own.

Dear Ancestor, the place you filled one hundred years ago,

Spreads out among the ones you left who would have loved you so.

I wonder if you lived and loved, I wonder if you knew -

That some day I would find this spot and come to visit you.

by Walter Butler Palmer (1868-1932) written in 1906.