No Pictures, Just Words

Arlington National Cemetery

I couldn't bring myself to take pictures here because I struggled to see the "beauty" of the cemetery. If you have seen my pictures, especially the one's from last summer's New Orleans  trip, then you know I have an affinity for patterns.

At Arlington National Cemetery there are patterns built into the foundation of the place, buried deep in the ground and echoed along the surface. Tombstones are placed deliberately so that they do not overlap. The names on the headstones always remain visible regardless of which direction you look towards them from the road and pathways. These white headstones ripple like waves cresting over the hills so you feel lost at sea among the dead.

I couldn't glorify it or try to recapture its sacred sorrow in pictures like a place that needed to be checked off a tourist's list and take my designated smiling selfie. I couldn't find it in me to frame the sorrow-scape in photographs, but I do feel compelled to record the visit in words.



The Blue Line Metro drops you off right in front of the entrance. It's a a shock to the system to go from aging lightrail line to lush manicured wrought iron fences and aged square column sentinels. A visibly new metal sign graces the entrance gate which reads, "No Recreation," though the tides of people were mostly of the white haired variety and exhibited a no-nonsense attitude.

I got my map and headed towards the oldest burials, the Confederate Memorial. Last time I was here, was twenty years ago. I was sixteen and I went as part of Close Up tour group. As a group we all saw the Tomb of Unknown Soldiers and watched the changing of the guard on a cold February day. Once the solemn duty was done, us group of rambunctious high school Juniors boarded the bus again with renewed laughter. It was checked off a list in less than an hour. I don't remember wanting to see more. Maybe I couldn't truly appreciate it until I got older.

This time I didn't watch the changing of the guard, but as I crested the final hill towards the Confederate Memorial, I heard the bell toll twelve times. I froze there in the vacant lane. The back section of the cemetery was deserted except for the graceful lines of lost lives stretched out before me in every direction I turned. The toll of the bell resonated through me and reminded me of the bodies that could no longer feel the rhythms  of life.

Such a place should not need to remind visitors, "No Recreation." Additional signs were placed throughout the cemetery reminding people that this site is our nation's hallowed ground and thus to be treated with respect. Why are these signs even necessary? This place developed as site of sacred remembrance.

The Smithsonian.com wrote an excellent historical piece, "How Arlington National Cemetery Came to Be," discussing how Arlington National Cemetery came about. It was not the deliberate thought out punishment that popular history would have you believe but an evolution of a war that dragged on far longer than anyone during that time anticipated.