RICHMOND, Va. — I wasn’t ready.

As a reporter, I had seen death at the hands of street gangs, and life in the hands of a surgeon placing a new heart into the chest of a 10-month-old boy.

But nothing had ever made me feel like this.

My arms grew hot, prickly. My legs would not move. My stomach cramped. Was I going to throw up? I felt sweat on my forehead. Tears pooled in my eyes. They were tears of sadness, then despair, finally anger.

I had tried to prepare myself: “It’s only going to be a statue.”

But when I looked up and saw it, bronze and nearly three stories tall — Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson sternly astride his horse in the middle of a Richmond intersection — I lost my moorings.

[At least 114 Confederate symbols have been removed since 2015, but what happens after they’ve been removed?]