Was My Brother in the Battle?

In 1964, or thereabouts, my parents took us out of school one day to go to Fort Fisher, North Carolina. This was before that Civil War fort was fully reconstructed, but there was enough of a museum for us to see the relics of some sad days gone by. I remember small medicine bottles and bloodletting utensils in a glass cabinet. Most of all, I remember a crude wooden cross half broken down in some bramble. Who knows why the cross was there, or if a cross from the war could have lasted a hundred years, but my brothers and I decided that we had found the grave of a fallen soldier.

After I read about the unknown soldiers whose remains were finally laid to rest after being found at the scene of Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield in Missouri, I thought of my day at Fort Fisher and that mysterious cross where my brothers and I lay some flowers. Later I walked up the hill to the Holston Cemetery in Emory. Sometimes I like to go and sit near the Confederate dead who are buried there atop a hill from which you can see Whitetop. The horizon seems bigger up there on that hill, but it’s not big enough to include the vista of home for so many of those men.

I’ve adopted one of these men as my kin. His Brown name is common enough, as common as Mitchell, so it’s possible we’re not related. It would be easy enough for me to find out, too. A few conversations with Robert Vejnar, the archivist at Emory & Henry, and I could probably put two and two together. Sometimes, though, as with the cross at Fort Fisher, I need a mystery to remain unsolved. I prefer to think that J. D. Brown buried in Grave 171 is my long lost cousin from South Carolina who found his way to the Confederate hospital at Emory after a battle and died far from home. I like to think it’s a small but fateful world that has put the two of us together in this community so I can put flowers on his grave.

There are two soldiers there whose names and states are unknown, Numbers 179 and 180. Once upon a time, somebody had to miss them and wonder if they’d ever walk back into a house and sit down to supper. I wonder if some families will ever figure out that their kin are laid to rest here in Virginia. Emory takes care of them, though. The Holston Cemetery is the best piece of land in Emory, to my mind. It’s high and dry and offers a panoramic view of the beautiful countryside.

The college, nestled in its small valley, could have claimed this superior view, but it didn’t. It makes more sense for the town to have sacrificed its best hill to the memory of the dead. If you’ve ever visited Arlington Cemetery, or any number of national cemeteries across the nation, you’ll agree that the war dead require more than simple plots. Their families and communities deserve the best views.

At Fort Fisher, where I roamed in the bramble, the Atlantic coastline is just across the earthen hills. Later, after my visit through history, my brothers and I would wade on the edge of this ocean where ironclad battleships once raged. Since then, I have visited that site many times. Knowing that my great-great grandfather was imprisoned there may have something to do with that, but what strikes me the most is the sense of peace I get there.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 26 May 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.

At a Loss for Words

When photographs of Daniel Pearl were released by his captors in 2002, I downloaded one of them from the Internet. Imaging software is great. It is used all the time to airbrush imperfections. People also play with it to put famous people alongside ordinary people or to mix up heads and bodies. What I did was erase everything except Pearl’s head. Then I put a blue wash around it. What I was trying to do was imagine him free, surrounded by a healing blue light.

I’m not a very good magician. Despite my new-age efforts to free Daniel Pearl by erasing his shackles, he was beheaded in Pakistan after being abducted January 23 en route to interview a fundamentalist Muslim leader. His death was announced in the United States on February 22. Soon thereafter, I took down my picture of Pearl that included lines from a Psalm for good measure. The blue swirls I had added were looking too much like a halo.

A few months later, after everybody in my family was asleep, I got on the Internet again and downloaded the infamous video of Pearl being beheaded. It’s not easy watching a person being beheaded. In fact, since I had never seen such a thing in my life, I didn’t really have the cognitive structure to see, really see, this murder. I’ve seen violence. I’ve been the victim of violence. But nothing prepared me for Pearl’s execution. I can’t even say that I have a visual memory of Pearl’s beheading today, either because there was no place in my brain to store that data or because I have blocked it.

When given the opportunity to see a video of Nicholas Berg, I took it. I decided beforehand, however, that I would close the video before I saw the beheading. I had no interest in seeing this young man’s execution. I can say this much. I saw a man in orange seated at the feet of five hooded men, one of whom read from a prepared speech. As I listened to this speech, I heard muted sirens in the background but held no hope that these sirens belonged to a patrol car speeding to the rescue. Having read a translation of the speech, I knew the gist of what was being said.

No translation can do justice to the accompanying vocalizations and sound effects. Just as the speech was ending, while the speaker was saying his last few words, other people called out with passion and jeers. At that point, I imagined that the men were executing Berg in front of a group of people. Forget for a moment about virtual voyeurs. Think instead about the real, live human beings who stand there and praise God while a young man is decapitated, screaming all the while.

Just as Nicholas Berg’s image disappeared from my computer screen, I thought of his hopes and his dreams and his inevitable regret at being in the wrongest place possible at the wrongest time. Downloading the video to rewind his life to a month earlier, or even editing it to take back the actions of the killers, was not an option. Erasing the cries of any bloodthirsty bystanders would not change history.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has written about the stages one goes through when facing death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I want to add another stage. I just don’t have the right language for it. It’s quite possible there are no words to describe this stage. Sadly, if there were, the people who could help us understand just the right words have been silenced.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 19 May 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.

Mother's Days

When my mother was a little girl, she had a pet chicken. The chicken slept in the bed with her when she visited her grandparents’ farm. Later, she had a pet goat that chased cars. When I think of that goat chasing the occasional car driving down an isolated country road, I have to laugh at the memory of a mother I didn’t know until she grew up, got married, and had me.

I guess she had to turn into the sort of mother that let us keep every cat that wandered into the yard. We kept hamsters, cats, fish, homeless baby birds, broken-down earthworms, and the occasional common roach. The only time Mama ever raised her eyebrows was when I arrived home from Woolworth’s with a white mouse. It was only fifty cents, I told her. How could I pass that up?

The last time I talked to my mother on the phone, she was excited about some small creature that had crept into her yard. She didn’t know what to call it, but from the sketchy description I assumed it was either a chipmunk or a mole. Perhaps a stray ground hog. She didn’t think it was a possum, but for all I know it was. There was a time when Mama could name whatever it was that came into her yard. Now it’s up to me to fill in the blanks.

Sometimes I want to get frustrated with Mama, who is so independent that it’s hard to convince her to turn her into a compliant old lady who does whatever her children tell her to do. I guess the same woman who inspired me to hold out for my own independence all these years isn’t going to let age or a little frailty hold her back. And I can’t stay frustrated for very long.

Who wouldn’t love an 82-year-old woman who puts water out for wild rodents and feeds lettuce in jar tops to lizards on her sun porch? My mother has always loved lizards. One winter, a lizard took up residence in a potted plant and stayed there until spring. That was in the first house she and my father lived in, a small house in the country they moved to when they started having children and outgrew a small apartment. Mama still has a bird nest she’s kept from that house. It has weathered fifty years and a numbers of moves.

Now Mama lives in a small house in a city. In March when I went to visit her, I didn’t tell her I was coming. I’ve always loved to surprise her that way. I found her in the yard clearing out branches from an ice storm. She may need to hold onto my elbow when we walk through a shopping mall, but on her own turf she is sturdy and strong as an ox. Unlike me, she weeds her garden. Unlike mine, her fig tree grows like a dream.

Once Mama told me that if she could live her life over, she’d be a farmer. Not being able to live out her dreams, she has done the best she could with a backyard in the city. Now my brother helps her to break up the soil, but she does most of the work. She’s happiest out there in her sun hat, weeding or studying new growth. The mocking birds and mourning doves follow her around like great-grandchildren while her cat watches from the porch. There are no goats or pet chickens, but there is a sanctuary for all kinds of creatures great and small.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 5 May 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.