Angel of Grief at Stanford University

Well everybody hurts, sometimes.
Everybody cries.
So hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
You are not alone.
Sometimes a simple and direct approach to life’s most difficult questions, like death and dying, is the best way to go. What might otherwise sound like a cliché becomes something different, something bigger than itself, something universal. And what is more universal than being hurt and feeling the need to grieve sometimes? What do we share more fully with others on this planet if not our common capacity to shed tears?
I recall the lines to R.E.M.‘s «Everybody Hurts» single (recently released as an album/​download to raise money for survivors of the January 2010 Haitian earthquake) when visiting this spot on the Leland Stanford Jr. campus. Often, I come here not to grieve about anything or anyone in particular, but because it’s a comforting reminder that, when the hurting time comes, I will not be alone.
Jane Stanford (1828 – 1905), the real driving force behind the creation and construction of the university after her son’s death in 1884 (the university being founded seven years later, in 1891), scattered the campus with numerous reminders of her own personal grief. She tended to express her sorrow in stone, by erecting buildings and monuments and markers, above all to remember her teen-​aged son, who did not live long enough to blow out the candles on his sweet sixteen birthday cake. Her husband was next to die, in 1893. Over the course of the last decade of her life, Jane the childless widow used the university as an expanding memorial to her loss, but also as a gift of sorts to the «sons and daughters» of California and beyond who would later come to study and work here. There are signs of her son and husband everywhere, as if the whole place were one huge cemetery. «Serra Mall» … «Taj Mahal» … you be the judge.
But what is not so commonly known is that Jane also had a deep affection for her brother, Henry Clay Lathrop (1844 – 1899), who died at age 54. Jane was sixteen years older than Henry, so she might even have felt a quasi-​maternal connection to her sibling. In any case, when he died in the middle-​aged prime of his life, she went about finding the perfect Carrara marble shell to preserve his remains, having a seven-​ton model made in Tuscany and shipped across the ocean to Palo Alto. Over the years, this grieving angel has been damaged by earthquakes, defaced by vandals, neglected, ignored, and allowed to fall into disrepair. The fingers of her exquisite left hand have been snapped off, as have her once-​broken wingtips. But now she is lovingly restored and rests behind a black, cast-​iron latticework surrounded by well-​tended dark green bushes and trees. She shines and shimmers hot-​white in the alabaster glow of the late morning sun. Her suffering is public, out in the open, for all to see. She is uninhibited about her pain. Her head rests heavily in the cradle of one arm, the folds of her flowing white tunic fall over naked feet, and the long tresses of her hair are bunched tightly into a ball on the top of her head. She’s no Victorian prude. She somehow manages to be both ancient and modern at the same time. You can almost feel the wetness and taste the salt on her tear-​stained cheeks. You want to walk up to her and embrace her, to lay your hands gently on her bare shoulders, and to tell her that it will be alright. That she is not alone, either. But leave her and Henry in peace. They’re OK now. They are together. She has had a good cry and is resting silently, healing slowly, forever waiting to exhale. She will be there to hurt with you if you need her. For whatever reason. At whatever time of the day or night it might be.
The original version of the Angel of Grief, a shared gravestone for an artist and his wife, is located in a Protestant cemetery in Rome. There are multiple copies located across the U.S., including New Orleans, as well as ones in Wales and Costa Rica.
As for Jane, she died in 1905 in a hotel on the Hawaiian island of O’ahu, the Gathering Place, possibly of a self-​administered strychnine poisoning. The island and its inhabitants had been annexed unilaterally by the U.S. government only seven years earlier, at the urging of sugar plantation owners, Christian missionaries, and naval officers looking to base a Pacific fleet that was expanding its imperial influence in the Philippines and China. Jane’s remains, along with those of her husband and son, are located mere steps from the grieving angel in a large mausoleum guarded by four sphinxes, two male and two female. The latter two, which are very impressive, are located in the back to hide their bare-​chested torsos from casual passers-​by.
Everybody hurts, sometimes. It was true in 1899, and it is true today. The Angel of Grief is a very fine reminder of that and a comforting one, too. There are lots of pretty places and attractive faces on the Stanford campus, but none perhaps is as poignant as she.