The name is not metaphorical, or not entirely. It refers to a stone where coffins were set down to rest during funeral processions, a pause in the journey between the home of the dead and the place of burial. These resting stones are scattered across rural Ireland, quiet fixtures of a landscape shaped by grief and repetition, and they often mark routes that communities walked for generations.

This particular stone sits along what is called a Mass path, a type of informal route used historically by Catholic communities to reach their place of worship, particularly during and after the period of the Penal Laws when public Catholic practice was heavily restricted. Over time, Mass paths accumulated their own customs, obligations, and memories. The association between a Mass path and a coffin-resting place makes a certain sense: both involve a procession of people moving through the land for a solemn purpose, and both reflect a lived relationship with routes that no longer appear on any official map. The local name "heaven", passed down in oral tradition and recorded by Joe Kennedy in 1986, suggests that the community attached genuine significance to this threshold moment, the point where the bearers stopped, set down their burden, and gathered themselves before continuing on.