I saw John Singer Sargent’s “Death and Victory” for the first time a week or so ago, thanks to a friend sharing it in remembrance of the Great War, World War I. It was created in 1922, when there had been barely enough time for the trauma of that war to have begun to form scar tissue, let alone heal. But in imagining myself seeing this, standing before it the year it was created, I can imagine it bringing some degree of solace.

Philip A. Bruce, my great grandfather, served in the Great War and I think about him and what “Death and Victory” would mean to him. He served in the Army at St. Mihiel and at Meuse-Argonne in 1918, and I think elsewhere. After the war he became a Philadelphia Police Officer, and in November 1929 was killed in the line of duty. He’s memorialized with other Philadelphia Police Officers in Franklin Square. It was my great grandmother who led the family through the Great Depression and provided for her young daughter and many relatives.

“Happy those who with a glowing faith, in one embrace clasped death and victory.”