Memento Mori: Visiting Adams Memorial
The world may come and the world may go; but no power yet known in earth or heaven can annihilate the happiness that is past.
I felt a charge down my spine as I entered the Rock Creek Cemetery through its rusting gates. Like Virgil, freshly traumatized from walking through the roaring hills of the Inferno and just got into the spheres of Paradise, I walked through the graves wondering the amount of life each occupant of those spaces have filled before. Each headstone in the endless rows stood there as a silent guard, marking and protecting the legacy of a life that had departed. I saw people parking their cars and running uphill to a gathering at a chapel to bid farewell to a dearest that has passed on. A faint church bell toll could be heard in the distance, and the smell of newly cut grass filled the air marking the end of a life form and another beginning.
Rock Creek Cemetery had a feeling that was foreign to me yet felt a holder of immense power. As I walked towards my reason of being there, my attention was constantly diverted by an array of both beautiful and ominous statues like the haunting Rabboni-Ffoulke Memorial of the crying Episcopal priest (this statue I won’t forget for sure).
It was not easy to arrive at Adams Memorial site. In photos it seems like a giant statue that you could spot from miles away. Once I got there, successfully and out of breath, I couldn’t help but to stare at her haunting serenity for a while that felt like forever and a day. The wistful weight surrounded the small area she occupies to a description that is beyond me. But I feel I am jumping ahead a little.
Of course, my visit to see this sculpture was not out of mere coincidence. Back in 2017, I was in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and I saw an eerie-looking status sitting at the end of one of the museum’s halls. It seems like a woman who was wearing an Iraqi abaya. I got intrigued. So I took a picture of her, saved her name, and went down a rabbit hole once I arrived home.
Crafted by an American sculptor by the name of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, The statue depicts Marion Hooper Adams, also known to her close friends as Clover Adams, the wife of a well-known historian named Henry Adams. Clover was an accomplished photographer and writer, and her photographs are archived in various museums and libraries across the United States, including the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (the one I visited), and the Massachusetts Historical Society. You can also see many of her letters to her father in the MHS website which demonstrates unprecedented lengths of unconditional love that she carried to her dear pater (which was the way she starts most of her letters to her father).
While Clover carried a deep love for her father, her shoulders were weighted down by mental illness and depression. Despite her many accomplishments and appreciation of the life she lived, she ultimately succumbed to her personal demons and took her own life in December 1885, she was 42. The exact reasons for Clover’s suicide are still unknown to this day and remains a point of speculation among historians and interested info pedestrians. One school of thought suggests that she was struggling depression and other mental illnesses, while others speculate that her death was associated by the death of her father whom she dearly cherished.
At the cemetery, Once you enter that narrow space in the cemetery, you can see that the statue standing on top of a large granite block having Clover’s head bowed down and hands holding a laurel wreath, her arms are stationed in a way that she’s wrapping her self up. The drapes of the shroud falls in a graceful swoosh around her body, creating a sense of calmness and fluidity. The statue carries a great number of detail, complexity and precision that is almost unmatched. The fabric conveys to the common looker as being very real and alive to the point you want to reach your hands to tidy the folds.
1607 H. Street
Sunday April 8
1883 -Dear pater,
A quiet week just gone by with no excitements of any kind. Several warm days- today rather cooler. Foliage very late. Maples in flower but so they were a month ago- a few hepaticas & arbutus out. Thursday dined at Judge Gray's to meet the John Gray's- he was nice as ever. Mrs Cameron Miss Clymer & Roustan the French Minister
Washington Sunday
May 27 3 P.m.Dear pater,
I've only time to send you a short screed before riding the day having slipped away. nothing to tell you--Sunday Aristarchi Bey came to lunch & say good bye & I photographed him as a "dude" with a small straw hat on his head - but alas! it is not a success & I fear will not print I'm not skilled yet & Henry which is so good is really owing to Richardson. Had our duty dinner Sunday eveg- & it went off very well. no society this week now that we take our daily ride late dining at 7 1/2 we see none of the people who used to drop into tea.
As I read through the content of Clover’s letters, there’s a high level of eagerness to inform her father of every aspect of her day and becomes evident as you read through more and more. From drinking tea with the upper “echelon” of Washington’s social scene to tending to her garden. I genuinely could sense a profound gratitude for the gift of writing through these letters, which allowed her to express her innermost thoughts, emotions, and experiences. On a personal level, the power of her words struck a chord within me, and its a sad chord. While technology has helped us stay connected, Clover's longing for her father mirrors my own yearning for the embrace of my family and friends back home whom I have not seen in six years. Probably this is why I am over analyzing them?
But I digress… Its time to head back home.
As I am heading back to my car through a narrow path, my attention was suddenly captured by a serene scene unfolding before me. Two individuals, sitting on the grass, were silent in a shared remembrance of a cherished loved one that lays before them. I then heard them laugh. Their laughter, at first infectious and warm like the coffee they were holding, but then seemed increasing in distance and fading away. As I made my way further down the path, the cheerfulness faded away into a ear deafening silence.
It was complete. It was a moment of heart-warming beauty and grief and a reminder of the fragility of life and the power of love to transcend even death itself. And so, with a heavy heart and a sense of profound reverence, I offer my condolences to all those whom I walked by that day, and to the ones who we lost. May they rest in peace, and may their memories be cherished forevermore.
