The Bones of My Bones

Those who do not look upon themselves as a link, connecting the past with the future, do not perform their duty to the world.—Daniel Webster

These are the bones beneath our feet—sacred relics of our living story, flesh of our flesh, the quiet echo of all we are. We stand on the ground they broke; breathe the air they fought to taste. Each line in stone, each memory pressed between pages, is a heartbeat tethered to us across the ages.

To remember them is not a choice, but a calling. We feel a pride that sings low and steady—a pride in their courage when hope was fragile. Through storms and sacrifice, through silent burdens borne, they built what could last so we might stand tall in their light.

The fathers who fought, who fell, carved out a place for us among nations. The mothers, in struggle and unyielding grace, carried us from darkness into dawn. Every breath we take stirs with the rustle of their dreams.

We reach back, cradling their names on our tongues, loving each ancestor as far as the mind can stretch. We cannot help but gather their stories—scraps of laughter, sorrow, resilience—because their journey runs in our veins. We are the sum of them: choices made and chances lost, hands clasped and voices raised.

So I gather the stories, thread by thread, called to this work by something deep and wordless. I am only the latest in a long line of keepers—scribes at the threshold, waiting for the next to rise when my voice, too, grows quiet. This is why I trace these lives. To restore memory. To welcome those we never met. To answer the unspoken call. Always, always knowing: They did it for us, and through us, their love endures—woven in memory, eternal as bone and breath.

by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943, further edited and reworded by William Stratton, 2025.