And when the last long breath was
drawn, and the limp, deserted body was all that was left to me of my
thirteen years of passionate devotion, my pride and hope, and the
nursing care of so many years, I walked out into the midnight and left
my boy to Death. The long tension was over, and I could give way to
tears.
It was only a child's death, a common thing, almost as common as
family existence, but it gave a new color to my life, establishing
forever a sympathy with the common grief, and a community of sorrow
with all bereft fathers and mothers, in the premature dissipation of
the hopes of their future, and the lapse of a dear companionship into
the eternal void. This is the human brotherhood of sorrow, sacred,
ennobling, sanctifying where it abides, the deepest lesson of the
school of life. My feet have wandered far, and my thoughts still
further from the places and beliefs of my childhood; but whatever and
wherever I may be, this grief at times catches me and holds me in a
pause of dumb tears, and every similar bereavement I witness renews
the sympathetic grief. I have never been able to find a consolation
for that loss, for it carried with it the future and its best dreams.
When his mother died, I thought that any death were easier to bear
than the sudden and terrible tragedy of that; but in the devastated
youth and the lingering pain of Russie's leaving, I found that
"not all the preaching since Adam
Has made Death other than Death.
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