"Tall pillar-style monument features a carved skull and crossbones at the base with the Latin phrase "Memento Mori" ("remember that you must die"), a common 18th-century reminder of mortality."
"During the post-Reformation era in Scotland, literacy rates varied drastically. Funerary carvings functioned as visual storytelling. A passerby did not need to know how to read the Latin inscription or the name of the deceased to look at a skull and instantly comprehend the message: "What you are, I once was; what I am, you will be."