Almost a hundred years ago, a teenage girl named Constance Witherby died suddenly of heart failure while hiking in the Swiss Alps. Her bereft mother commissioned a sculpture and dedicated a small park on a quiet street near the Blackstone River.

As the years passed, the neighborhood fell on hard times and the park into disrepair. The statue, made of bronze and granite, endured.

The end of the century brought a revival of public parks, and the lovely statue was moved to Blackstone Boulevard. Constance’s brother, now very old, had greenery and flowers planted around it, and came to water the garden himself.

A short history is here. I never knew the Witherbys, but one day while walking on the Boulevard, I found an iron railroad spike. My mother told me that there once was a trolley rail there, and my great-grandfather was a conductor.

So the past is felt in the present.