Leaving My Mark

I decided the best way to escape the marathon madness was by visiting the dead.

A temperate and overcast Saturday seemed the ideal time to visit Shockoe Hill cemetery, an easy mile and a half walk from my house.

I've been to Shockoe a couple of times, always on St. Patrick's day for their annual salute to all the Irish buried there, but I had a specific grave site in mind today.

Walking up Hospital Street, I came upon the Hebrew cemetery's gate wide open and since I'd never been through it, decided to change that.

Situated on a hill, it was a garden-style cemetery like Hollywood with big trees and picaresque vistas.

One of the first grave markers I read said, "In memory of Henrietta, consort of Cesar Guggenheimer of Rockbridge, Virginia."

Hmm, consort? Not wife? Is that like friend with benefits?

As I was considering the nature of Cesar and Henrietta's relationship, I heard a nearby train whistle and saw puffs of smoke just beyond the hill.

Up a path to the fence I went to watch a train chug by below as they have probably since Henrietta's time.

I saw a massive tree whose trunk had grown so wide it had grown around half of Elias Markens' grave marker, as if it were about to swallow it.

In the Jewish tradition, many of the grave markers had pebbles and even bits of brick on them to show that someone had visited the grave.

Names rarely seen anymore were everywhere, names like Fanny, Yetta, Hortense and Gussie for women and Heinrich, Adolph and Maier for men.

No doubt part of that was because of their birthplaces - Germany, Bavaria, Prussia.

One thing I was not expecting was a Hebrew Confederate burial site with 30 men in it and many pebbles on the marker.

Each post of the metal fence that surrounded their graves was topped by a metal Confederate cap.

Then I found another non-wife, "In memory of Jessica, consort of John Abrahams, so she might rest in peace."

That last line with the "might" made me think that perhaps theirs wasn't a legal relationship, either. Hmm, perhaps that kind of thing wasn't as unusual back then as we might have thought.

When I went to leave, I looked down and found a brightly-painted pebble, of all the unlikely things. sitting just beyond the gate.

I considered where it would do the most good and ended up putting it on Henrietta's grave since her marker hadn't mentioned everlasting peace so she probably needed it more than Jessica.

My work done there, it was on to Shockoe for the main event, the reason I'd come in the first place.

But first I saw all kinds of heartbreaking markers.

Like the one for a five-year old and her Dad. "Nicholas Caire, born in France 1809. Lost his life in 1850 in the vain attempt to save his daughter from a watery grave. Lenora, born 1845. She sleeps here with him."

I saw a forlorn looking purple balloon lying on the ground next to the grave of Confederate soldier Charles Bell Gibson who died April 23, 1865, two weeks after Lee surrendered.

So he made it through the bloodbath of the war but not much more. Damn.

"William Lowery, eldest son of S.A. Lowery, died May 29, 1880 from injuries received on R & F RR bridge, Richmond." He was thirteen.

Enough of having my heart wrenched reading markers like those.

The next half hour was devoted to finding the grave of Daniel Norton, the local doctor responsible for cultivating Virginia's indigenous grape, the Norton, and namesake of the street a few blocks from my house.

It wasn't easy, but eventually I located the stone slab laid on the ground and covered in wet leaves.

Sacred to the memory of
Daniel Norborne Norton, M.D.
Son of John Hatley Norton of England
and his wife Catherine Bush
of Wincester, Virginia
born in November 1794
Intermarried with Elizabeth Jaquelin Call
and afterwards with Lucy Marshall Fisher
Departed this life the
23rd day of January 1842

At the bottom was inscribed "Bowen, Richmond, Virginia," the source of the chiseled stone, I assumed.

I'd read Todd Klimans' book "The Wild Vine" about this man's unhappy life, I'd visited Chrysalis Vineyards with the largest plantings of Norton in the world, I go by Norton Street on a daily basis and I'd tried Norton every place I'd come across it offered. For years I'd been meaning to come here for this.

And now finally, I was at Dr. Norton's final resting place. Just one more thing.

I cleared off the soggy leaves and went looking for remembrances. After digging through leaves in a corner of the cemetery by the brick wall, I found pebbles embedded in the dirt.

Choosing six of the smoothest I could find, I took them back to Dr. Norton's marker and lined them up above the top line of wording.

You are remembered, old man.

Walking home, I considered my morning with the dead an especially satisfying way to have spent a couple of gray hours.

And for future reference, I'm perfectly okay with consort on my gravestone.