Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (June 2021)
With Me in Spirit
After my grandmother passed away, I felt a strong pull to be in West Virginia, the state where she was born and raised. I drove the hour and a half from Baltimore to Harpers Ferry, hoping to feel close to her.
The town sits where the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers meet, its historic streets climbing steep hillsides beneath green mountains. I walked past old brick storefronts and stone stairways, John Brown’s Fort, and the spire of St. Peter’s Church rising above the trees. A deer grazed quietly in the brush, and a father and son sat together at the water’s edge. High on the hill, in the old cemetery, I found a gravestone bearing my grandmother’s first and middle name.
In that moment, I knew she was with me in spirit. Harpers Ferry gave me a place to grieve, remember, and feel her close.
