Candles, laurels and doves: the symbols of remembrance

Around death, human beings have always woven a language of symbols. Knowing them gives meaning to gestures we make almost without thinking.

The candle

Lighting a flame for the departed is among the most universal of rituals: the light that goes on burning when the person no longer does, the small companion against the dark. From the Roman oil lamp to the candle at the funeral home — and today, the virtual candle on a memorial — the gesture is the same: “your light is still burning in me.”

The laurel

The victor's crown in Greece and Rome, the laurel at a funeral says something beautiful: this life was a victory. That is why funeral wreaths are wreaths — circles without beginning or end, a symbol too of what does not finish.

The dove

Present in very different traditions as a messenger between heaven and earth, it represents the soul departing in peace. Releasing doves at farewells keeps that ancient meaning alive.

Flowers

Beauty that doesn't last — which is precisely why flowers have accompanied death since the Palaeolithic: there are graves tens of thousands of years old containing flower pollen. They remind us that the fleeting is precious too.

The yew and the cypress

The trees of the churchyard and the cemetery: evergreen (life going on) and long-lived beyond reckoning. The yew has stood in British churchyards for a thousand years and more; the cypress points to the sky like an arrow, and was planted, it's said, because its roots grow straight down, without disturbing those at rest.

New symbols for ancient gestures

The online memorial has inherited this language: the candle lit with a click, the virtual flowers, the laurel in the In Memoriam logo. The medium changes; the human need to give remembrance a symbol remains intact.