Mourning Father's Death Quotes

You can't love your mother or father if you don't also have the capacity to grieve their deaths and, perhaps even more so, grieve parts of their lives.

Everything,' his father said, 'comes down to time in the end--to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn't it all based on minutes going by? Isn't sadness wishing time back again? Even big things--even mourning a death: aren't you really just wishing to have the time back when that person was alive? Or photos--ever notice old photographs? How wistful they make you feel? ... Isn't it just that time for once is stopped that makes you wistful? If only you could turn it back again, you think. If only you could change this or that, undo what you have done, if only you could roll the minutes the other way, for once.

If things went according to death notices, man would be absolutely perfect. There you find only first-class fathers, immaculate husbands, model children, unselfish and self-sacrificing mothers, grandparents mourned by all, businessmen in contrast with whom Francis of Assisi would seem an infinite egoist, generals dripping with kindness, humane prosecuting attorneys, almost holy munitions makers - in short, the earth seems to have been populated by a horde of wingless angels without one's having been aware of it.

I think maybe Gladstone had it right. I think my father did. They understood that the meaning of life is connected, inextricably, to the meaning of death; that mourning is a romance in reverse, and if you love, you grieve and there are no exceptions---only those who do it well and those who don't.

Forbid me not to weep; he was my father; And, had you lov'd him half so well as I, You could not bear his death thus patiently.

We have been more than one year without him, and just now we are starting to see things again.

After You Left the weight of your absence became a black hole revolving around my memory of you--itself a black hole. Wavelets wrinkled the sheer sheet of space and time. Father, the loss of you is a planet orbiting what might have been. I cannot say if the emptiness is a grand celestial body or a vacuum so complete nothing can escape. I know these forces have mass and motion that bends, calls in, ripples fabric-- distorts the pace of light for a billion years.

My parents died years ago. I was very close to them. I still miss them terribly. I know I always will. I long to believe that their essence, their personalities, what I loved so much about them, are - really and truly - still in existence somewhere. I wouldn't ask very much, just five or ten minutes a year, say, to tell them about their grandchildren, to catch them up on the latest news, to remind them that I love them. There's a part of me - no matter how childish it sounds - that wonders how they are. "Is everything all right?" I want to ask. The last words I found myself saying to my father, at the moment of his death, were "Take care." Sometimes I dream that I'm talking to my parents, and suddenly - still immersed in the dreamwork - I'm seized by the overpowering realization that they didn't really die, that it's all been some kind of horrible mistake. Why, here they are, alive and well, my father making wry jokes, my mother earnestly advising me to wear a muffler because the weather is chilly. When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all over again. Plainly, there's something within me that's ready to believe in life after death. And it's not the least bit interested in whether there's any sober evidence for it. So I don't guffaw at the woman who visits her husband's grave and chats him up every now and then, maybe on the anniversary of his death. It's not hard to understand. And if I have difficulties with the ontological status of who she's talking to, that's all right. That's not what this is about. This is about humans being human.

When you bury a parent, you lower his or her casket into the ground, but the history between you lives on. The funeral is an ending, yes, but it is also a beginning - the start of a true reckoning with those hurts between you that must be laid to rest. When we buried my mother, I mourned her then and in the years that followed. As I grieved, I thought I'd long since come to terms with my father - with how he'd both delighted and failed me, with the ways in which he'd unknowingly bruised me just as all parents do, despite their best intentions.

They had to die. They were killing innocent people. (Wulf) They were surviving, Wulf. You never had to face the choice of being dead at twenty-seven. When most people’s lives are just beginning, we are looking at a death sentence. Have you any idea what it’s like to know you can never see your children grow up? Never see your own grandchildren? My mother used to say we were spring flowers who are only meant to bloom for one season. We bring our gifts to the world and then recede to dust so that others can come after us. When our loved ones die, we immortalize them like this. I have one for my mother and the other four are my sisters. No one will ever know the beauty of my sisters’ laughter. No one will remember the kindness of my mother’s smile. In eight months, my father won’t even have enough of me left to bury. I will become scattered dust. And for what? For something my great-great-great-whatever did? I’ve been alone the whole of my life because I dare not let anyone know me. I don’t want to love for fear of leaving someone like my father behind to mourn me. I will be a vague dream, and yet here you are, Wulf Tryggvason. Viking cur who once roamed the earth raiding villages. How many people did you kill in your human lifetime while you sought treasure and fame? Were you any better than the Daimons who kill so that they can live? What makes you better than us? (Cassandra) It’s not the same thing. (Wulf) Isn’t it? You know, I went to your Web site and saw the names listed there. Kyrian of Thrace, Julian of Macedon, Valerius Magnus, Jamie Gallagher, William Jess Brady. I’ve studied history all my life and know each of those names and the terror they wrought in their day. Why is it okay for the Dark-Hunters to have immortality even though most of you were killers as humans, while we are damned at birth for things we never did? Where is the justice in this? (Cassandra)

We were a religious sect consisting of two people, and now half the congregation was gone. There would be no closure, no healing. I would simply adjust myself to a new and severely depleted reality. The world would come to an end, as it always does, one world at a time.

Mourn not the passing away of a life well-lived, but celebrate. Count the times your souls smiled together. Death is only the end of a chapter, Michael, and not the entire book. And so as this body makes a return to the soil, her spirit will watch over you and the cute little angel she left behind, and shall forever live in your heart.

He took a deep breath in, still managing himself as if he were resisting temptation. He was a soldier, his father was in the service, too. Crying wasn't something Morell men did. They just didn't. He hadn't cried at Robbie Morell's funeral. So he wasn't going to now.

Dimitri had driven his mother back to Montreux from the Lausanne hospital at dusk on July 2, in his blue Ferrari, on the last day of his father's life. Véra had sat silently for a few minutes and then uttered the one desperate line Dimitri ever heard escape her lips, "Let's rent an airplane and crash.

Thinking of her father, she realized how greatly she had leant on that man of deep kindness, how sure she had felt of his constant protection, how much she had taken that protection for granted. And so together with her constant grieving, with the ache for his presence that never left her, came the knowledge of what real loneliness felt like. She would marvel, remembering how often in his lifetime she had thought herself lonely, when by stretching out a finger she could touch him, when by speaking she could hear his voice, when by raising her eyes she could see him before her. And now also she knew the desolation of small things, the power to give infinite pain that lies hidden in the little inanimate objects that persist, in a book, in a well-worn garment, in a half-finished letter, in a favourite armchair. She thought: 'They go on—they mean nothing at all, and yet they go on,' and the handling of them was anguish, and yet she must always touch them. 'How queer, this old arm-chair has out-lived him, an old chair—' And feeling the creases in its leather, the dent in its back where her father's head had lain, she would hate the inanimate thing for surviving, or perhaps she would love it and find herself weeping.

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour forth a stream, a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

Michael grew silent, his gaze softening as he looked from me to Will, and a dim light of hope flickered in my heart. “You would mourn for him.” “Yes, I said. “I would mourn him forever with a broken heart. This human soul has given me so many blessings and curses. I’m the only one of our kind who has ever felt the most perfect happiness and the truest sorrow - because of this soul. My love for my Guardian is one of those blessings. It’s not a curse.” “You can,” I promised. “Please trust me. I need all the help I can get, and that includes yours. If you kill my Guardian, then I will never forgive you. I can’t be at war with you too. Please, please, Michael, my brother. Don’t kill him. … A tear caught on the edge of my lips. “Do you love me as your sister?” His mouth opened to reply, but nothing came out. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “You’re worried about me, because you love me. Don’t be afraid of feeling anything. our Father made us this way. He wouldn’t make a mistake.” “I…,” Michael said, and emotion spilled over his face. His brow furrowed with exhaustion and he seemed overwhelmed by what he felt. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. “You are my sister, Gabriel.” “Then don’t do this.” I begged him. He was quiet again for several agonising moments, returning to his emotionless state. “Keep him. I have faith in you, Sister. Will and I breathed sighs of relief, but it was a few seconds before Michael withdrew his sword. His expression remained unchanging as he lifted Will’s death warrant.

At the age of twenty, without experience or advice, my mother was torn between two moribund creatures. Her marriage of convenience found its truth in sickness and mourning... Upon the death of my father, Anne-Marie and I awoke from a common nightmare. I got better. But we were both victims of a misunderstanding: she returned lovingly to the child she had never left; I regained consciousness in the lap of a stranger.

Kastor’s death he felt as the death of a man he had not known, or understood. Losing his brother—that had happened a long time ago, like the loss of another self who had not grasped the flawed nature of the world. Later, he would face that. Later they would lay Kastor out, taking him on the long walk, inter him, where he should be, with their father. Later he would mourn, for the man Kastor was, for the man he might have been, for a hundred different pasts and might-have-beens.

If things went according to death notices, man would be absolutely perfect. There you find only first-class fathers, immaculate husbands, model children, unselfish and self-sacrificing mothers, grandparents mourned by all, businessmen in contrast with whom Francis of Assisi would seem an infinite egoist, generals dripping with kindness, humane prosecuting attorneys, almost holy munitions makers - in short, the earth seems to have been populated by a horde of wingless angels without one's having been aware of it.

All that day and all that night there sat an awful gladness in my heart,—nay, blame me not if I see the world thus darkly through the Veil,—and my soul whispers ever to me saying, “Not dead, not dead, but escaped; not bond, but free.” No bitter meanness now shall sicken his baby heart till it die a living death, no taunt shall madden his happy boyhood. Fool that I was to think or wish that this little soul should grow choked and deformed within the Veil! I might have known that yonder deep unworldly look that ever and anon floated past his eyes was peering far beyond this narrow Now. In the poise of his little curl-crowned head did there not sit all that wild pride of being which his father had hardly crushed in his own heart? For what, forsooth, shall a Negro want with pride amid the studied humiliations of fifty million fellows? Well sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence, had held your ideals unattainable, and taught you to cringe and bow. Better far this nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you.

A book on steam engine design lay next to one of poems by the poet laureate Tennyson. Lenore traced the poetry book’s cover design. A finely made book with its gold-tooled leather and gilt-edged vellum pages. A beautiful book. An expensive one given to her by a man who’d likely spent three months’ hard-earned wages to obtain it. Lenore made a mournful sound in her throat. Nathaniel. She closed her eyes, remembering his ready smile and eyes as blue as bachelor’s button. She thought of him every day, but lately, in the weeks following her father’s death, he was constantly on her mind.

Neil felt a half-second from losing his mind, but then Andrew said his name and Neil's thoughts ground to a startled halt. He was belatedly aware of his hand at his ear and his fingers clenched tight around his phone. He didn't remember pulling it from his pocket or making the decision to dial out. He lowered it and tapped a button, thinking maybe he'd imagined things, but Andrew's name was on his display and the timer put the call at almost a minute already. Neil put the phone back to his ear, but he couldn't find the words for the wretched feeling that was tearing away at him. In three months championships would be over. In four months he'd be dead. In five months the Foxes would be right back here for summer practices with six new faces. Neil could count his life on one hand now. On the other hand was the future he couldn't have: vice-captain, captain, Court. Neil had no right to mourn these missed chances. He'd gotten more than he deserved this year; it was selfish to ask for more. He should be grateful for what he had, and gladder still that his death would mean something. He was going to drag his father and the Moriyamas down with him when he went, and they'd never recover from the things he said. It was justice when he'd never thought he'd get any and revenge for his mother's death. He thought he'd come to terms with it but that hollow ache was back in his chest where it had no right to be. Neil felt like he was drowning. Neil found his voice at last, but the best he had was, "Come and get me from the stadium." Andrew didn't answer, but the quiet took on a new tone. Neil checked the screen again and saw the timer flashing at seventy-two seconds. Andrew had hung up on him. Neil put his phone away and waited. It was only a couple minutes from Fox Tower to the Foxhole Court, but it took almost fifteen minutes for Andrew to turn into the parking lot. He pulled into the space a couple inches from Neil's left foot and didn't bother to kill the engine. Kevin was in the passenger seat, frowning silent judgment at Neil through the windshield. Andrew got out of the car when Neil didn't move and stood in front of Neil. Neil looked up at him, studying Andrew's bored expression and waiting for questions he knew wouldn't come. That apathy should have grated against his raw nerves but somehow it steadied him. Andrew's disinterest in his psychological well-being was what had drawn Neil to him in the first place: the realization that Andrew would never flinch away from whatever poison was eating Neil alive.

Partnered with Death itself,” he said, repeating a part of my horoscope. A harsh laugh escaped him. “I understand now.” The Raja moved away from his mirror wall, his eyes twinkling as he bowed low. The gesture was wrong. My cheeks flared with heat. “No,” I said, “please don’t do that.” Pressing my palms against the glass, I willed it away, and slowly, it became thinner and thinner until it disappeared. The Raja, still bent in a bow, looked up in surprise as I walked into his cell. I lifted him up by the shoulders, not letting myself flinch when my fingers brushed against the blood on his armor. “You do not need to bow to me, Father.” The Raja smiled. “Your forgiveness makes my hell easier to bear.” This conversation, this air of ease unshackled from courtly posturing, struck me. It was so natural. We might have even been close in another lifetime. “I do not know how you became a princess of Bharata,” he said. “Who knows how our last lives slip into the ones we live in now. I will never know those memories. And perhaps that is for the best.” A lump rose in my throat. I will never know those memories. The tree behind the chained door…it had so many memories. All of which, I was convinced, belonged to me. Nritti’s image flashed in my head, bright as a flame. I didn’t know her from this life, but I must have known her from before. My father must have seen a look cross over my face because he stepped away from me. “You do not belong here, daughter. Go. Be who you will be. Do not waste your life mourning the dead.” I nodded tightly, my throat thick with so many things left unsaid. “I will not forget you, Father.” He smiled. “That pleases me. A memory is a fine legacy to leave behind.

running to and fro with trays of refreshments. Odo, who knew that his mother lived in the Duke's palace, had vaguely imagined that his father's death must have plunged its huge precincts into silence and mourning; but as he followed the abate up successive flights of stairs and down long corridors full of shadow he heard a sound of dance music below and caught the flash of girandoles through the antechamber doors. The thought that his father's death had made no difference to any one in the palace was to the child so much more astonishing than any of the other impressions crowding his brain, that these were scarcely felt, and he passed as in a dream through rooms where servants were quarrelling over cards and waiting-women rummaged in wardrobes full of perfumed finery, to a bedchamber in which a lady dressed in weeds sat disconsolately at supper. "Mamma! Mamma!" he cried, springing

The more I know about him and what he was like before he died, the better. My magic deals with how a soul is spun together. If I’m going to have any chance of healing him, I need to understand what that soul was like.” August’s jaw tenses, and then finally, he sighs, and rubs his eyes. “He was a pompous dolt, if you want the truth. Had the whole city in the palm of his hand, girls throwing themselves at him wherever he went. And he loved it. Bragged about it like he’d done a damn thing to deserve it.” August shakes his head. “I honestly think sometimes he forgot the only reason he was anything at all was because of who his father was.” The bitterness in August’s tone is taut, almost angry. He grimaces down at his fists. “I shouldn’t be talking about him like this. He was far from my favorite person, but he was my brother.” “His death doesn’t erase how he behaved toward you during his life,” I say. “It’s okay to mourn him at the same time.

What we have here is a war—the war of matter and spirit. In the classical era, spirit was in harmony with matter. Matter used to condense spirit. What was unseen—the ghost of Hamlet’s father—was seen—in the conscience of the king. The spirit was trapped in the matter of theater. The theater made the unseen, seen. In the Romantic era, spirit overwhelms matter. The glass of champagne can’t contain the bubbles. But never in the history of humanity has spirit been at war with matter. And that is what we have today. The war of banks and religion. It’s what I wrote in Prayers of the Dawn, that in New York City, banks tower over cathedrals. Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion. When I came back to midtown a week after the attack—I mourned—but not in a personal way—it was a cosmic mourning—something that I could not specify because I didn’t know any of the dead. I felt grief without knowing its origin. Maybe it was the grief of being an immigrant and of not having roots. Not being able to participate in the whole affair as a family member but as a foreigner, as a stranger—estranged in myself and confused—I saw the windows of Bergdorf and Saks—what a theater of the unexpected—my mother would have cried—there were only black curtains, black drapes—showing the mourning of the stores—no mannequins, just veils—black veils. When the mannequins appeared again weeks later—none of them had blond hair. I don’t know if it was because of the mourning rituals or whether the mannequins were afraid to be blond—targets of terrorists. Even they didn’t want to look American. They were out of fashion after the Twin Towers fell. To the point, that even though I had just dyed my hair blond because I was writing Hamlet and Hamlet is blond, I went back to my coiffeur immediately and told him—dye my hair black. It was a matter of life and death, why look like an American. When naturally I look like an Arab and walk like an Egyptian.

So many socks. After the pair the undertaker asks for (I picture them black beneath the fold in your open casket, your toes still cold) what else to do,. Body bags of old suits, shirts still pressed, long johns, the unworn, unwashed wreckage of your closet, too many coats to keep, though I will save so many. How can I give away the last of your scent? And still, father, you have errands, errant dry cleaning to pick up-- yellow tags whose ghostly carbon tells a story where to look. One place closed for good, the tag old. One place with none of your clothes, just stares as if no one ever dies, as if you are naked somewhere, & I suppose you are. Nothing here. The last place knows exactly what I mean, brings me shirts hanging like a head. Starched collars your beard had worn. One man saying sorry, older lady in the back saying how funny you were, how you joked with her weekly. Sorry— & a fellow black man hands your clothes back for free, don’t worry. I’ve learned death has few kindnesses left. Such is charity—so rare & so rarely free— that on the way back to your emptying house I weep. Then drive everything, swaying, straight to Goodwill— open late—to live on another body & day.

I pulled the sheet off their faces. Their faces were black with coal dust and didn't look like anything was wrong with them except they were dirty. The both of them had smiles on their faces. I thought maybe one of them had told a joke just before they died and, pain and all, they both laughed and ended up with a smile. Probably not true but but it made me feel good to think about it like that, and when the Sister came in I asked her if I could clean their faces and she said, "no, certainly not!" but I said, "ah, c'mon, it's me brother n' father, I want to," and she looked at me and looked at me, and at last she said, "of course, of course, I'll get some soap and water." When the nun came back she helped me. Not doing it, but more like showing me how, and taking to me, saying things like "this is a very handsome man" and "you must have been proud of your brother" when I told her how Charlie Dave would fight for me, and "you're lucky you have another brother"; of course I was, but he was younger and might change, but she talked to me and made it all seem normal, the two of us standing over a dead face and cleaning the grit away. The only other thing I remember a nun ever saying to me was, "Mairead, you get to your seat, this minute!

And white-armed Andromache led the lament among them, holding in her arms the head of horse-breaking Hector: "My husband, you were lost from life while young, and are leaving me a widow in your halls; and the child is still just a baby, whom we bore, you and I, ill-fated both, nor do I think he will reach young manhood; before that this city will be wholly ravaged; for you its watchman have perished, who used to guard it, who protected its devoted wives and tender children. They soon will be carried away in the hollow ships, and I with them; and you then, my child, either you will follow with me, and there do work unworthy of you toiling for a harsh master-or some Achaean man seizing you by the arm will hurl you from the ramparts, unhappy death, in his anger, one whose brother, perhaps, Hector slew, or his father or even his son, since so many of the Achaeans gripped the broad earth in their teeth at Hector's hands. For your father was no gentle man in sad battle; therefore the people mourn him through the city, and cursed is the grief and lamentation you have laid upon your parents, Hector. And to me beyond all others will be left painful sorrow; for you did not reach out your hands to me from your bed as you were dying, nor did you speak some close word to me, which I might always remember through the nights and days as I shed my tears." So she spoke, crying, and the women in response mourned.

Although father was a very precious man and the loss of him is very great to me, as it is to all honest folk who knew him, it is Solace's death that is the harder for me to bear. All the world mourns father, whose labors God blessed while he lived. Many will remember him. Not so my Solace, who made no mark upon the world. Nights I can barely sleep for the loss of her weight against my body. In dark of night, I hear her cry, and start awake. But it is a voice of my dream only, and it wakes me to an aching loneliness. Now, all these months since her death, I think of her, and how she would have grown and changed. I see her walking beside me with a rolling gait, reaching out a plump hand to clasp my fingers. I see her hair lengthened and curling about her face. I imagine the sound of her voice as she says her first words, the small frown at her brow as she puzzles at something, a glimpse of her milk teeth as she smiles. It will be so, always. As the years pass, she will live and grow in my mind's eye, from infancy through sweet girlhood, and when I am old I will see her still, coming herself into womanhood, her sky-blue eyes expressing a kindly wisdom, her laugh as she lifts up her own babe. Yet all that time, she will lie in the ground, an infant always, her life ended just a little after the world had turned a full year. In my dreams, she comes to me. But always, in the end, frightfully. For I see her in her grave. Frail little finger bones, bleached white, curl around a crumbling parchment, a rotting peg doll, and a scatter of wampum beads fallen loose from a decaying shred of deer hide.

MAC. Fear not then any longer the hostile spear of the Argives; for I myself, old man, before I am commanded, am prepared to die, and to stand for slaughter; for what shall we say if the city thinks fit for our sakes to encounter a great danger, but we putting toils on others, avoid death when we can be saved? Not so, since this would be ridiculous for suppliants sitting at the shrines of the Gods to mourn, but being of such a sire as we are, to be seen to be cowards; how can this seem good! it were more noble, I think, (which may it never happen!) to fall into the hands of the enemy, this city being taken, and afterward, being born of a noble father, having suffered dreadful things, to see Hades none the less; but shall I wander about, driven from this land, and shall I not indeed be ashamed if any one says, "Why have ye come hither with your suppliant branches, yourselves being too fond of life! Depart from the land, for we will not aid cowards." But neither, indeed, if these die, and I myself am saved, have I any hope to fare well; for before now many have in this way betrayed their friends. For who would choose to have me, a solitary damsel, for his wife, or to raise children from me? therefore it is better to die than to have such an unworthy fate as this; and this may even be more seemly for some other, who is not illustrious as I. Lead me then where this body must needs die, and crown me and begin the rites, if you think fit, and conquer your enemies; for this life is ready for you, willing, and not unwilling; and I promise to die for these my brethren, and for myself; for not caring for life, I have found this most glorious thing to find, namely, to leave life gloriously.

In my life I’ve only been good at one thing. The violin. Not as good as my father. Maybe I could have been. But I drank too much and lost my temper too often. I came to Italy because I failed in Vienna. I came to Italy because I was in love with a woman who wasn’t in love with me. And for the last thirteen years, I’ve taken it out on you. If you hadn’t been so strong, I might have broken you. I might have made you hate me. But you fought back. You shrugged me off. And now I listen to you and I am in awe.” “You are?” Eva asked in amazement. These were things she had never heard before. “When you play, Eva, I feel hopeful. They can take our homes, our possessions. Our families. Our lives. They can drive us out, like they’ve driven us out before. They can humiliate us and dehumanize us. But they cannot take our thoughts. They cannot take our talents. They cannot take our knowledge, or our memories, or our minds. In music, there is no bondage. Music is a door, and the soul escapes through the melody. Even if it’s only for a few minutes. And everyone who listens is freed. Everyone who listens is elevated. “When you play, I hear my life lifting off your strings. I hear the long notes and the scales, the tears and the hours. I hear you and me, together in this room. I hear my father and the things he taught me that I passed on to you. I hear it all, and my life plays on, his life plays on, over and over, when you play.” Eva set her instrument down and, with tears streaming down her face, knelt in front of her uncle and slid her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his thin chest. He embraced her gently, and they stayed in sorrowful silence, listening to the wind as it wailed a mournful strain not so different from the one Eva had composed, wondering if the wind would be the only witness, the only whisper, when the death in Austria came for them too.

Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine, Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine! Oh the Earth was made for lovers, for damsel, and hopeless swain, For sighing, and gentle whispering, and unity made of twain. All things do go a courting, in earth, or sea, or air, God hath made nothing single but thee in His world so fair! The bride, and then the bridegroom, the two, and then the one, Adam, and Eve, his consort, the moon, and then the sun; The life doth prove the precept, who obey shall happy be, Who will not serve the sovereign, be hanged on fatal tree. The high do seek the lowly, the great do seek the small, None cannot find who seeketh, on this terrestrial ball; The bee doth court the flower, the flower his suit receives, And they make merry wedding, whose guests are hundred leaves; The wind doth woo the branches, the branches they are won, And the father fond demandeth the maiden for his son. The storm doth walk the seashore humming a mournful tune, The wave with eye so pensive, looketh to see the moon, Their spirits meet together, they make their solemn vows, No more he singeth mournful, her sadness she doth lose. The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride, Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide; Earth is a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true, And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue. Now to the application, to the reading of the roll, To bringing thee to justice, and marshalling thy soul: Thou art a human solo, a being cold, and lone, Wilt have no kind companion, thou reap'st what thou hast sown. Hast never silent hours, and minutes all too long, And a deal of sad reflection, and wailing instead of song? There's Sarah, and Eliza, and Emeline so fair, And Harriet, and Susan, and she with curling hair! Thine eyes are sadly blinded, but yet thou mayest see Six true, and comely maidens sitting upon the tree; Approach that tree with caution, then up it boldly climb, And seize the one thou lovest, nor care for space, or time! Then bear her to the greenwood, and build for her a bower, And give her what she asketh, jewel, or bird, or flower — And bring the fife, and trumpet, and beat upon the drum — And bid the world Goodmorrow, and go to glory home!

Esther Agrees to Help the Jews ESTHER 4 When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes  o and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry. 2He went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one was allowed to enter the king’s gate clothed in sackcloth. 3And in every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews,  p with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them  q lay in sackcloth and ashes. 4When Esther’s young women and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed. She sent garments to clothe Mordecai, so that he might take off his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. 5Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what this was and why it was. 6Hathach went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate, 7and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him,  r and the exact sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. 8Mordecai also gave him  s a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther and explain it to her and command her to go to the king to beg his favor and plead with him on behalf of her people. 9And Hathach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. 10Then Esther spoke to Hathach and commanded him to go to Mordecai and say, 11“All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside  t the inner court without being called,  u there is but one law—to be put to death, except the one  v to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live. But as for me, I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.” 12And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. 13Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” 15Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, 16“Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for  w three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law,  x and if I perish, I perish.” 17Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.

Deena: Face of Fear Prologue Flipping back her long silvery-blond hair, Deena frowned at her image in the mirror. In the worn gown of mourning black, she looked far too young, far too vulnerable for her nineteen years. First, with the death of her mother and now her father, the future stretched out a frightening unknown. Frightening, but for the thread of hope within, not only because of the optimism of youth but also from her steadfast trust in her Heavenly Father--the father who wouldn’t let her down. Or hadn’t until now. Grimacing, she stared back into the mirror only to freeze as her eyes caught the reflection of her sister staring at her over her shoulder into the mirror. The stunning features of the older sister darkened threateningly. Flinching, Deena swung about. “Elizabeth...Beth, what are you doing here?” Struggling for composure, Deena searched the room. “Lord, what does it mean? Beth can’t be here. She’s in America with her husband, isn’t she?” Even as fear nagged, Isaiah 41:10 flashed in her heart. “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: ....

marriage would necessitate a change of religion, the still-hesitant Alix at first refused. But the otherwise impassive Nicky was nothing if not determined. The very day after Ernie and Ducky were married, the overwhelmed princess finally agreed to become both Russian Orthodox and wife of the heir to the Russian throne. Just as Queen Victoria, the preeminent guest at the festivities, was finishing her breakfast, Ella burst in on her grandmother with the dramatic announcement that “Alix and Nicky are to be engaged.” The wedding was planned for the spring of 1895, but the death of Nicky’s father changed all the elaborate arrangements, including sufficient time for Alix to become literate in the Russian language. Alix had just joined her future husband at the imperial summer palace of Livadia in the Crimea when Tsar Alexander III died on November 1, 1894. His widow Minnie, the princess of Wales’s sister, became the dowager empress; and her son Nicky the new tsar, Nicholas II. The morning after her fiancé’s accession, Alix was received into the Orthodox faith and at the same time given the new name of Alexandra Feodorovna. The imperial family decided the wedding should follow the late tsar’s funeral within the week. Like her mother’s wedding at Osborne in 1862, Alix’s was far more funereal in tone than joyous. All that saved it from complete gloom was the depth of the young bride and groom’s love for each other. During the years when Alice’s children were marrying their cousins and producing a multitude of little second cousins, Vicky had moved from the hurricane’s eye to near oblivion. Though she had been wounded by Fritz’s illness and Willy’s uncivil behavior, until June 1888 she at least had a loving and sympathetic husband to share her distress and lighten her sometimes intolerable burden. After his death, Vicky was left to face her martyrdom stripped of that unfaltering support. With her widowhood, her difficulties centered, inevitably, on the new emperor. Such was the exquisite release Willy experienced in succeeding his father to the throne that he took vainglory to new heights. To the horror of his mother and English grandmother, he jettisoned the standard symbols of mourning that were obligatory for a son in so visible a role, notably refusing to refrain from travel for pleasure. On a grander scale, in his eagerness to test his new powers, Willy made the most disastrous mistake of his early reign only two years after coming

Rescue dogs are trained to perform such responses on command, often in repulsive situations, such as fires, that they would normally avoid unless the entrapped individuals are familiar. Training is accomplished with the usual carrot-and stick method. One might think, therefore, that the dogs perform like Skinnerian rats, doing what has been reinforced in the past, partly out of instinct, partly out of a desire for tidbits. If they save human lives, one could argue, they do so for purely selfish reasons. The image of the rescue dog as a well-behaved robot is hard to maintain, however, in the face of their attitude under trying circumstances with few survivors, such as in the aftermath of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. When rescue dogs encounter too many dead people, they lose interest in their job regardless of how much praise and goodies they get. This was discovered by Caroline Hebard, the U.S. pioneer of canine search and rescue, during the Mexico City earthquake of 1985. Hebard recounts how her German shepherd, Aly, reacted to finding corpse after corpse and few survivors. Aly would be all excited and joyful if he detected human life in the rubble, but became depressed by all the death. In Hebard's words, Aly regarded humans as his friends, and he could not stand to be surrounded by so many dead friends: "Aly fervently wanted his stick reward, and equally wanted to please Caroline, but as long as he was uncertain about whether he had found someone alive, he would not even reward himself. Here in this gray area, rules of logic no longer applied." The logic referred to is that a reward is just a reward: there is no reason for a trained dog to care about the victim's condition. Yet, all dogs on the team became depressed. They required longer and longer resting periods, and their eagerness for the job dropped off dramatically. After a couple of days, Aly clearly had had enough. His big brown eyes were mournful, and he hid behind the bed when Hehard wanted to take him out again. He also refused to eat. All other dogs on the team had lost their appetites as well. The solution to this motivational problem says a lot about what the dogs wanted. A Mexican veterinarian was invited to act as stand-in survivor. The rescuers hid the volunteer somewhere in a wreckage and let the dogs find him. One after another the dogs were sent in, picked up the man's scent, and happily alerted, thus "saving" his life. Refreshed by this exercise, the dogs were ready to work again. What this means is that trained dogs rescue people only partly for approval and food rewards. Instead of performing a cheap circus trick, they are emotionally invested. They relish the opportunity to find and save a live person. Doing so also constitutes some sort of reward, but one more in line with what Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher and father of economics, thought to underlie human sympathy: all that we derive from sympathy, he said, is the pleasure of seeing someone else's fortune. Perhaps this doesn't seem like much, but it means a lot to many people, and apparently also to some bighearted canines.

After my father died, I couldn’t stop crying. I wore a shirt of his to sleep in for over a month. I went into a mourning that hasn’t entirely ended. Long after my father died, I felt he, something of him, was lodged slightly above my heart. It was a physical sensation. Sometimes in an old-style southern Italian restaurant, like Lanza’s in the East Village, I would order veal parmigiana because he loved it. I would imagine him eating it, tasting it, I could see his face then as he chewed with delight, and felt I was tasting it for and with him. Swallowing was hard.

On the day our Father dies, it will be necessary for us to take His place. It has sometimes been observed that a man only becomes a man on the day his father dies. However old, active or independent he might be, it is on that day alone that he experiences a distressing sense of emptiness above him. He is now the responsible leader who marches ahead and who masks the unknown for those who follow him. No guide will any longer return in a bad situation to offer him a hand; he remains alone in life, facing the horizon over which death looms. It is then that the man pauses for reflection, and looks back at those he must help. He becomes conscious of his worth and his responsibilities; he finally understands that nothing can come henceforth from anyone but him. In the history of the world, the human mind will not be free of its infancy until the day when it will experience that crisis of distress, hesitation and mourning. On that day, a thinker or a poet will have the courage to pronounce these oppressive words: “Heaven is empty, my father is dead, or rather, never existed; it was my shadow, immeasurably magnified, that I followed along the road.” Above all, though, he will have the superhuman strength to add: “It is up to us, henceforth, to take the place of our dead father and to realize that necessary God to whom we have attributed all science, all wisdom and all providence.” I do not know whether many men would be capable today of making the prodigiously painful effort that would claim such an enfranchisement, and centuries might yet be necessary to discern the sense of it. On that day, we shall doubtless understand that no unknown exists outside ourselves and that it is within ourselves that all of the immense unknown must be sought.

A PRAYER FOR THE EASTERN CAPE YOUNG PEOPLE SOUTH AFRICA 2022 Father God I come before your throne of grace with a heavy heart at this time of great sadness of young lives who are snatched by the evil powers. Right now I ask you Lord Jesus to give peace, strength and comfort to the parents and the relatives who are mourning this death that was sudden and unexpected in the mighty name of Jesus. Shower the assurance of your love, peace, grace and kindness in this time of great sadness and help us to be there for each other in Jesus name. Lord we ask for your divine intervention and your divine protection in the mighty name of Jesus. We break every curse and evil agenda of the enemy that is meant to destroy the future of this province and the entire nation of South Africa and we come against every single negative word that was said to harm our children and our grandchildren in Jesus name. We destroy every evil arrow that is sent to kill our young people and we send it back to the pit of hell where it belongs in the mighty name of Jesus. Father God you are the God of justice, meet every need, reveal the real cause of this devastating situation and bring justice to light in the mighty name of Jesus. Heavenly Father we speak life, protection, wisdom and the blessings of the Lord over the entire youth of South Africa. Father rule and reign in our lives and in our land in Jesus name. Thank you King Jesus for your faithfulness. Amen.

In my senior year of high school, a friend’s father died suddenly of heart failure. I sat at the funeral and sobbed. I sobbed for her loss, of course, but I also sobbed for the deeply shameful pang of envy I felt for a brief moment. At least with death, you can mourn. It feels much hollower when someone simply disappears. Perhaps it was the loss of so much that made me want so little. The less I had, the less I’d have to inevitably part with. When I lay there inside that old rusted van on those exquisitely manicured Salt Lake City streets, it felt as though I knew something all those people didn’t.

A PRAYER FOR THE EASTERN CAPE YOUNG PEOPLE SOUTH AFRICA Father God I come before your throne of grace with a heavy heart at this time of great sadness of young lives who are snatched by the evil powers. Right now I ask you Lord Jesus to give peace, strength and comfort to the parents and relatives who are mourning this death that was so sudden and unexpected in the mighty name of Jesus. Shower the assurance of your love, peace grace and kindness in the time of great sadness and help us to be there for each other in Jesus name. Lord we ask for your divine intervention and your divine protection in the mighty name of Jesus. We break every curse and evil agenda of the enemy that is meant to destroy the future of this province and the the entire nation of South Africa and we come against every single negative word that was said to harm our children and our grandchildren in Jesus name. We destroy every evil arrow that is sent to kill our young people and we send it back to the pit of hell where it belongs in mighty name of Jesus. Father God you are the God of justice,meet every need, reveal the real cause of this devastating situation and bring justice to light in the mighty name of Jesus. Heavenly Father we speak life, protection, wisdom and the blessings of the Lord over the entire youth of South Africa. Father rule and reign in our lives and in our land in Jesus name. Thank you King Jesus for your faithfulness. Amen.

I felt sad, but not necessarily about my father. What I was mourning wasn’t just my brother, or my father, or my cousin, or Chunk, or Tammy. I was mourning the childhood that had lasted years into my adulthood—because I got stuck. I was reconciling myself to the loss of my youth as a self-actualized adult, now that I had the tools to face it all—and now that I was officially an orphan, and had no choice but to grow up.

He could not forgive his father, and he could not love his brothers whom he had never met. But he could feel compassion for them, as he did for the other victims, and it was that he sought more than anything else: to mourn their deaths rather than holding on to his anger at their lives.

Heaven will not only look fresh and new, it will feel fresh and new. John gives us, not just a vision of Heaven’s fresh beauty, but a “feel” of Heaven’s serenity, which permeates the atmosphere because God is there: And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:3–4).

This is aretē; this is the best human prize and the fairest for a young man to win.” The man who fights without pause among the promachoi “is a common good (xynon esthlon) for the polis and all the people (demos).” … “If he falls among the promachoi and loses his dear life, he brings honor to his town (asty) and his people (laoi) and his father.” Young and old alike lament him / and his entire polis mourns with painful regret. / His tomb and his children are notable among men, / and his children’s children, and his genos hereafter … / but if he escapes the doom of death … having prevailed [in battle], … / all men give place to him alike, the youth and the elders…. / Growing old he is distinguished among his citizens. Never does his name or his excellent glory (kleos) perish, but even though he is beneath the earth he is immortal.

Japanese tragedy illustrates this aspect of the Trinity better than Greek tragedy, Kitamori taught, because it is based on the feeling expressed by the word tsurasa. This is the peculiar pain felt when someone dies in behalf of another. yet the term implies neither bitterness nor sadness. Nor is tsurasa burdened with the dialectical tension in the struggle with fate that is emphasized in Greek drama, since dialectic is a concept foreign to Japan. Tsurasa is pain with resignation and acceptance. Kitamori called our attention to a Kabuki play, The Village School. The feudal lord of a retainer named Matsuo is defeated in battle and forced into exile. Matsuo feigns allegiance to the victor but remains loyal to his vanquished lord. When he learns that his lord's son and heir, Kan Shusai, has been traced to a village school and marked for execution, Matsuo resolves to save the boy's life. The only way to do this, he realizes, is to substitute a look-alike who can pass for Kan Shusai and be mistakenly killed in his place. Only one substitute will likely pass: Matsuo's own son. So when the enemy lord orders the schoolmaster to produce the head of Kan Shusai, Matsuo's son consents to be beheaded instead. The plot succeeds: the enemy is convinced that the proffered head is that of Kan Shusai. Afterwards, in a deeply emotional scene, the schoolmaster tells Matsuo and his wife that their son died like a true samurai to save the life of the other boy. The parents burst into tears of tsurasa. 'Rejoice my dear,' Matsuo says consolingly to his wife. 'Our son has been of service to our lord.' Tsurasa is also expressed in a Noh drama, The Valley Rite. A fatherless boy named Matsuwaka is befriended by the leader of a band of ascetics, who invites him to accompany the band on a pilgrimage up a sacred mountain. On the way, tragically, Matsuwaka falls ill. According to an ancient and inflexible rule of the ascetics, anyone who falls ill on a pilgrimage must be put to death. The band's leader is stricken with sorrow; he cannot bear to sacrifice the boy he has come to love as his own son. He wishes that 'he could die and the boy live.' But the ascetics follow the rule. They hurl the boy into a ravine, then fling stones and clods of dirt to bury him. The distressed leader then asks to be thrown into the ravine after the boy. His plea so moves the ascetics that they pray for Matsuwaka to be restored to life. Their prayer is answered, and mourning turns to celebration. So it was with God's sacrifice of his Son. The Son's obedience to the Father, the Father's pain in the suffering and death of the Son, the Father's joy in the resurrection - these expressions of a deep personal relationship enrich our understanding of the triune God. Indeed, the God of dynamic relationships within himself is also involved with us his creatures. No impassive God, he interacts with the society of persons he has made in his own image. He expresses his love to us. He shares in our joys and sorrows. This is true of the Holy Spirit as well as the Father and Son... Unity, mystery, relationship - these are the principles of Noh that inform our understanding of the on God as Father, Son, and Spirit; or as Parent, Child, and Spirit; or as Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier...this amazing doctrine inspires warm adoration, not cold analysis. It calls for doxology, not definition.

You can only understand how someone else needs to handle death in the given, specific moment. There are few hard and fast rules. I understand both my father and my friend. Or rather, I understand neither and so allow both the dispensation the ignorant should grant the wise.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the true purpose of marriage is none other than talking, and this is not only precisely what distinguishes it from other types of personal relationships but also what is most missed: the trivial conversations about everything from the neighbor’s bad mood to how ugly a friend’s daughter is. Pointless and none too insightful observations are the essence of intimacy, what we mourn after the death of our wives, our fathers, our friends. A few months after Maia’s death I was

Any military person dying was a loss, even when that loss furthered a greater good. But with this fight for this planet all but decided, and any more deaths were just wasteful tragedies. Mothers, fathers, spouses, children . . . all would mourn needlessly lost lives.

Eloquently, Barbara Deming expresses this longing when she writes about her father’s death: “Years ago now. It was on a weekend in the country and he’d been working outside with a pick and a shovel, making a new garden plot. He’d had a heart attack and fallen there in the loose dirt. We’d called a rescue squad, and they were trying to bring him back to life, but couldn’t. I was half-lying on the ground next to him, with my arms around his body. I realized that this was the first time in my life that I had felt able to really touch my father’s body. I was holding hard to it—with my love—and with my grief. And my grief was partly that my father, whom I loved, was dying. But it was also that I knew already that his death would allow me to feel freer. I was mourning that this had to be so. It’s a grief that is hard for me to speak of. That the only time I would feel free to touch him without feeling threatened by his power over me was when he lay dead—it’s unbearable to me.

Andrei rested on a bench directly in front of a grave that belonged to: 'A father, hard worker, and beloved friend.' He leaned back, resting in the cemetery, and with each second, his desire to know more about this man 'Yeah, he’s a father, hard worker, and beloved friend. Weren’t we all at some point? What’s his kink? The worst thing he’s done to a person? The greatest thing he’s good at?' he thought. That’s what Andrei wanted to know. Not titles the man himself would disapprove of. What good was a proper impression in a cemetery filled with thousands of proper impressions? One must be indecent. So Andrei closed his eyes and imagined the father who worked hard and was a beloved friend. Maybe his kink was that he needed to do it in public—in the restroom after a date or at church during mass. Maybe the worst thing he had ever done was work so hard for his family that he never once saw them. Maybe the best thing he was good at was giving gifts to his friends. Yes, that’s it. He never gave money or handed them gift cards, but instead gave his brothers exactly what filled them the most. One year, he gave a notebook to his buddy John with the same line written over and over in painful cursive. The line said: 'Happy Birthday, you get thirteen hours of my life' and repeated until you could see the traces of hand cramps squiggling for life on the forty-second page. 'What a good man,' imagined Andrei. 'Hell of a mate.

Anders knew he would soon lose his father, and that impending loss seemed more concrete now, more real, not like air but like a door or a wall, something you could bang against, bang into, and of course children know they will lose their parents, they know it from early on, but most are able to believe that that particular present will not come, that it is years away....

He had a flattering view of me as someone interesting, capable, witty, smart, high-spirited. I did not share that view of myself, and wondered why he held it. But it was the death of that girl - the one who lived in his head - that I mourned when he died. Even more than I mourned him, I suffered the loss of the person he thought I was.

The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. .

Again, one man loses by death a much-loved1359 son; another has a reprobate son alive; both equally to be pitied, though the one mourns over the death, the other over the life, of his boy.

Young rarely showed outward grief and discouraged public displays of mourning. He had kept his tears to himself after Joseph Smith’s death, and he did not participate in deathbed vigils for his first wife Miriam or his father. When his daughter Mary Eliza Croxall (by Clarissa Ross) died in 1871, a “shocked” and sickened Young cancelled all business and simply remained inside for a day. As the summer of 1875 drew to a close, though, Young’s emotions were unusually ragged. One month after Joseph Angell’s death, George A. Smith died. For four decades, Smith and Young had been at the center of the church’s history: the 1834 Zion’s Camp march, the 1840–1841 mission to England, the tumultuous events of Nauvoo, and the exodus. At his friend’s funeral, Young uncharacteristically wept.2

صمت الروح صمت يصقل الحرف قبل ان اتفوه به. صمت فنجان القهوة قبل ان ارتشفه. صمت الفاجعة. هذا الصمت عندما رنّ الهاتف، ما بعد منتصف الليل وقال لي مواسياً: "لقد حاولنا وخسرناه..." صمت الهاتف عندما اغلقته وتوجهت نحو المطبخ كي اشرب كأس ماء. كأس ماء كي لا اذرف دمعة. على الشرفة يردد المذياع النعوة: "انتقل الى رحمته تعالى المأسوف على شبابه...." هذا الغريب الذي لم انس حتى الآن صوته قال بجمود: "انتقل" ولم يذكر الى اين.. قال: "المأسوف على شبابه" ونسي طفولتي.. ينعون الميت وينسون من يخلف وراءه.. كان أبي يردد: "الحياة زهرية حتّى في حزنها" فارتديت الزهر. تأتي امي ترتدي الاسود وترحل. ترتدي الاسود وتنسى الوصية.

This is life, Tom,' his father had explained, standing in the doorway to their funeral home's main chapel before approaching her [Tom's mother]. 'And this is death.' Jack Klay switched off the light and darkness filled the room. 'Death is always present, but death is afraid of the light.' His father switched the light back on. 'Your mother was a light.' He squeezed Klay's hand. 'You are a light, Tom. But when a light is switched off, the world is back to its natural state. Do you understand?' Klay said he did. He took from the lesson a message his father had not intended: if the fundamental state of the world is darkness, it is foolish to grieve. He deid not want to be foolish. His mother wouldn't like that. And so to honor her he swore he would not cry at her funeral. He would not mourn her, or anyone.... Without realizing it, his definition of darkness expanded over the years so that it wasn't just grief over a lost life he silenced. He found ways to switch off his feelings for all sorts of things that might end: friendships, loves, dreams. Over time, his idea of what constituted an end expanded, too. He learned to protect himself not just from the prospect of grieving, but from any loss, any pain. He began pulling the plug on possibilities earlier and earlier, shutting himself off from everything he might care deeply about before it had a chance to hurt him by dying in front of him--the way his mother had.

Into another city, not only Daniel, but all the children of God, from the least to greatest, from the lowest to highest, from first to last, are soon to enter; a city not merely sixty miles in circumference, but fifteen hundred miles; a city whose walls are not brick and bitumen, but precious stones and jasper; whose streets are not the stone-paved streets of Babylon, smooth and beautiful as they were, but transparent gold; whose river is not the mournful waters of the Euphrates, but the river of life; whose music is not the sighs and laments of broken-hearted captives, but the thrilling paeans of victory over death and the grave, [50] which ransomed multitudes shall raise; whose light is not the intermittent light of earth, but the unceasing and ineffable glory of God and the Lamb. Into this city they shall enter, not as captives entering a foreign land, but as exiles returning to their father's house; not as to a place where such chilling words as "bondage," "servitude," and "oppression," shall weigh down their spirits, but to one where the sweet words, "home," "freedom," "peace," "purity," "unutterable bliss," and "unending life," shall thrill their bosoms with delight forever and ever. Yea; our mouths shall be filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing, when the Lord shall turn again the captivity of Zion. Ps.126:1,2; Rev.21:1-27.

We have but one way, as it seems to me, of showing our gratitude to those who lie here: it is to hold their parents in the same high regard as they did, to be as affectionate to their children as though we were ourselves their fathers, and to give such support to their wives as they did while they lived. For whom could we be expected to honor in preference to those who lie here? Whom amongst the living should we more justly hold in high regard than their relations, who were on an equality with us all in reaping the fruits of their valor, but now that they are dead bear alone the kinsmen’s part in their misfortune? But in truth I do not know what need there is to lament so sadly: for we were quite aware that we were mortals. So why chafe now at the fate which we so long expected, or be so extremely distressed by the calamities of nature, when we know well that death is common to the basest and the noblest alike? Death neither disdains the wicked nor admires the virtuous, but is even-handed with all. Were it possible for those who escaped the perils of war to be immortal for all time, there would be cause for the living to mourn the dead for evermore. But we see not only that our nature yields to sickness and old age, but that the spirit to whom has been allotted the charge of our fate is inexorable. Therefore it is fitting to consider those most happy who have closed their lives in risking them for the greatest and noblest ends; not committing their career to chance, nor awaiting the death that comes of itself, but selecting the fairest one of all. For I say their memory can never grow old, while their honor is every man’s envy. Of their nature it comes that they are mourned as mortal, of their valor that they are lauded as immortal. Thus you see them given a public funeral, and contests of strength and knowledge and wealth* held at their tomb; because we think that those who have fallen in war are worthy of receiving the same honors as the immortals. * Since about 450 B.C. the State funerals had become elaborate festivals: they were celebrated each year in October, and included athletic and musical competitions. (Funeral Oration section 75-80)

With the clock close to 11 p.m., Carrington had gone home and McDonnell was just putting on his cloak when the gates of New Palace Yard were flung open and a caravan of motor-cars puttered through. Out of the first scrambled the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, and his wife, Clementine. The others disgorged Churchill’s mother and stepfather; his brother and sister-in-law; and Captain Hugh Warrender and the 9th Duke of Marlborough. Together, they advanced to the door. Churchill had made himself quite obnoxious in the days after Edward’s death. In one of his first meetings with the new King, he had tactlessly picked up where he had left off with his father, insisting that ‘a great change was necessary in the Constitution’. George had icily responded that he was ‘averse to violent changes’. Now, on the very eve of Edward’s funeral, the Home Secretary insisted on his right to a private viewing of the coffin. McDonnell refused point-blank. Churchill attempted to pull rank. Unwavering, McDonnell retorted that if he were not satisfied, he could go and rouse Carrington, who was asleep in a nearby house, and solicit a second opinion. For several minutes, the two men bickered on the threshold until the Home Secretary, thoroughly bested, flounced off with his relations. It was, the incandescent McDonnell wrote, ‘an amazing instance of vulgarity and indecency of which I should not have thought that even Churchill was capable’.

that she realized how wrong she was. Father didn’t care that elephants formed close-knit, matriarchal groups; that they mourned their dead like humans. Nor did he consider that the elephant he had killed—for the mere sake of an ornament on his desk—would have been bewildered by fear and pain at the moment of its death. For Father, the tusk—and everything else in the Hall like it—was just a trophy. These noble creatures weren’t to be studied or venerated, but conquered. They would never understand each other.