Another Name on the Wall: Part Two

Another Name on the Wall: Part One can be found here.

Washington, D.C. January.

After Christmas in New York with my family, I went down to D.C. for a few days of museuming. I had many plans but one was bigger and more important than the rest. And I, of course, put it off until the last day.

I had to hurry as I walked across the mall towards the every enlarging Lincoln Monument. Successfully putting off this until the last hours of sunlight for my last day, the sky was starting to streak colors by the time I got to the little park rangers' shack on the top of the hill.

I went up to him with confusion plastered on my face. I wonder if he is ever approached by people without confusion on their faces. It seems like a place that people would prefer to have confusion plastered on their faces instead of grief. Confusion is nicer to read.

I tell the ranger I'm looking for a name. "Estrumberto Solis. E-S-T-R..." I spell it out. He types it in. It isn't in the computer.

We look it up in the book. eXtruberto. Oh. With an X. I never knew that. With an X. Oh. I never knew that. I never knew.

I had wanted to buy some flowers. I had wanted to leave something there. I had nothing. No flowers dotted the cold January walkways. Nothing to leave. Walking from the Holocaust Memorial Museum, I had found a rock. It was white, small, and still had globs of DC dirt clinging to it. I shoved it into my pocket. It was all I had. It would work.

"Thank you." I tell the ranger. He nods. And hands me two slips of paper and a pencil.

And I walk.

I pass the statues and the tall flag and start to descend into the scar of a monument in the earth. Panel 46E - Line 50. It is towards the end where the path starts to slope upwards again and it points towards the Washington monument, the Capitol. For a moment, they are both reflected in the wall. It's picturesque. It's stunning. People stop and take pictures.

The light is fading. The land glows in soft golds. The sky stricken with wisps of clouds echoes back vague recollections of a Turner painting.

The house my mother grew up on was once called Crockett Street. Her cousin Beto lived next door. It is now Extrumberto Solis Rd. If you look at a map of my mother's hometown, it is littered with names of dead young men. Monuments to families who don't live there anymore. Monuments to sons who don't live anymore.

I kneel down in front of the slab of cold marble. My knees instantly absorb the chill from the granite beneath me. It is 19 degrees in January in DC. I find his line. I find his name. I find that I can no longer see. Tears pour out of my eyes. My face freezes and is thawed at the same time. Hot hot hot tears.

I find a kleenex in my bag. I dab and dab my eyes. It doesn't help. I try to get the paper out and the pencil out and rub the rubbing but,

it doesn't work out.

So I just kneel there. My shoulders slumped, staring at a piece of rock, older than all of us, with the name of a man younger than me. Hoping that acclimation with make me feel less. Hoping that I stop acting the fool. Hoping that I will stop thinking that I am acting foolish.

My mom was 18. He was 22. He survived in Vietnam six weeks and three days. He was drafted. He was in the 9th Infantry. He died in hostile, ground casualty with multiple fragmentation wounds. Dinh Tuong, South Vietnam. Where is that? Googlemaps doesn't know. I don't know.

In the dying light, a child walks behind me. I can hear her little boots on the stone. I can see her mittened hand in her father's hand in the reflection on the Wall. She says to her father in a hushed tone (perhaps earlier she was quieted for being too loud), "Why is she kneeling, Daddy?"

He simple replies, "She lost someone whose name is on the wall."

I felt insincere after that. It is hard to say you lost someone you never knew. It is hard to put into words the amount of regret and longing you have for someone whose whole life is a "what-if" in your mind. Can you grieve for someone you never knew? Should you?


Weighted down with guilt and woe, I put the paper to the wall and used the supplied pencil. I repeated this a second time, more carefully, for my mother. I took it down and put them in a book I had in my bag. I sat staring for a while. I took a few pictures. It was getting colder and darker. I stood up. I placed my white rock on the ledge of underneath his name. I walked away. I wandered to the Korean War Memorial--a war my grandfather fought in. I wandered to the WWII Memorial--another war my grandfather fought in. I wandered to the train. I went to dinner. I went to my hostel. I went to sleep. I flew home the next morning.

Beyond my history with this name on the wall, beyond the fact that my family flesh is emblazoned in that searing black cut on the landscape, there is something comforting about knowing these names with continue on.

Days earlier, while at the Met in New York, I saw a tombstone for a young man. Etched in the white marble was the phrase, "On the death of Chairedemos, his father Amphichares erected this monument on grieving a good son. Phaidimos made it."

Even if this monument disappears and slowly fills up with dirt, someday, someone will be using a tiny brush and taking away a tiny bit of dirt and read "Extrumberto Solis." Here lies Beto Solis, a good son, a good nephew, a missing piece of a family. Here lies Beto Solis, a cousin never known, a man who never got to grow up, a person I will always outlive. Here lies memorialized Beto Solis, a name that will be marked as long as America exists.

On the death of Extrumberto "Beto" Solis, his country, The United States of America, erected this monument on grieving a good son.

Another Name on the Wall: Part One

NYC. Christmas.

I was passing through the Met's Greek and Roman section. Rooms filled with dingy white marble labeled with placards informing the masses of their history, of their importance to humanity, of why we should be awed to stand before them.


A standard (and rather non-attracting) slab of marble was edged up against a wall. There were grander pieces near it: a tall urn with specks of original coloring, a giant memorial for a dead king, a piece of ancient jewlery. This slab, about three feet across with no discernible pictures, most had not made the journey to this place and time, was emblazoned with some text. Text I could not read. It was readable, clear and sharp carvings despite being millennia old.



The placard told us it said:

"On the death of Chairedemos, his father Amphichares erected this monument on grieving a good son. Phaidimos made it."

The poetry in the words is lacking. Perhaps lost in translation, perhaps lost because of the eons of time separating us but regardless a man lost his son, a good son, and lamented this fact and built a monument. A monument that not only proves Amphichares was rich enough to make this memorial, but that he loved his good son enough to immortalize him and his emotions (and that fact he was "good" in stone.

I'm certain that Amphichares and Phaidimos (both since long dead) had no idea that 3,000 years later anyone, much less someone who is a resident of a land not even discovered at the time, would look at this and feel moved. But I suppose, that was the point of Amphichares' desire to make this. To create something that will be remembered eternally (if possible) like he will remember his son for the rest of his mortal life. So that someone else can understand or feel that pain that he did when he lost his son. Auden wrote (about death):

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Perhaps Amphichares would have shared these words with us in his own time, but his lack of poetry or ability to betray his emotions or dignity kept him from it. So instead he tells us, "Here lies a good son." Honorable words enough.