Mercy in the Madness

On the way home from a work trip, I drove around Richmond, VA, wondering what I might remember from the time I lived there as a grad student.  While many streets were familiar, I couldn’t quite recognize many of the businesses and landmarks, nor could I be sure which had been my apartment on Mulberry Street. I looked for the places near my old apartment where I used to wait tables and go to bars, but they were mostly gone.  I thought one street was the one I used to bike to class on, and another might be the one I took to my field placement, but I just couldn’t be sure.  I drove around Maymont where I used to spend a lot of time, and it hardly looked familiar. Whether this was because a lot has changed in the city or because I drank so much in those days, I can’t say.  It has been nearly 20 years, and I suppose I have changed a lot in those 20 years as well. 

I miss some elements of those carefree days, but I’m also somewhat embarrassed when I think of them. I sometimes fantasize about shedding my current responsibilities and becoming a waitress again, though of course it has its own stresses.  I remember having nightmares about trying to bring customers their food past a plethora of obstacles – a fleet of horses, a raging river.  I remember coming home with aching feet and an apron full of cash. I remember dropping a tray full of glasses at the exclusive country club where I worked for several years but can no longer find without my GPS.

I did, however, recognize Byrd Park where I once went running, tripped over my own feet, fell on my face, tore up my elbow into a bloody mess (the scar remains), and was given a roll of paper towels by a stranger who happened to be walking by.  Yes, that moment stands out with some clarity!

I did notice that all of the monuments were gone from Monument Ave – not a surprise after the last few years.  I’m not particularly sorry to see them go, but I do hope they are in a museum somewhere, as they are both art and history; an aesthetically beautiful reminder of an ugly commitment to a false and hateful ideology.

I decided to go to a place I had never been, though it’s quite near my old haunts – Hollywood Cemetery. I spent a few minutes driving around it and clicking some photos.  There is a list and map of the famous dead, though I wasn’t interested in finding anyone in particular. I did come upon the monument to Lewis Ginter, whose botanical garden I had visited the night before. 

This might be an appropriate place for those removed monuments, I thought, as it is filled with other memorials to significant confederate men and women, but no one needs to drive through it on their daily commute, and it is somewhat tucked away. There are plenty of other notable Richmonders buried there too – let the dead have their greatness together with their shame laid away with their bodies, as we all will. Once inside, it’s quite enormous, a veritable city of ghosts, and there is an area that overlooks the James River and part of the Richmond skyline.

The chapel was very pretty, with the morning sign pouring through the narrow, delicate stained-glass windows, and the James River a shining ribbon on the other side.  I wonder how long it has been standing there, silently watching over the dead, and how much longer it will stand.  Perhaps not long in the grand scheme of things; perhaps not long enough to see our nation’s current wounds and conflicts become footnotes in the pages of some future history book – only the most acute events remembered, the rest only vaguely familiar.