October 12

“For the first sharp pangs there is no comfort; whatever goodness may surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain. But slowly, the clinging companionship with the dead is linked with our living affections and duties, and we begin to feel our sorrow as a solemn invitation, preparing us for that sense of loving, pitying fellowship with the fullest human lot, which, I must think, no one who has tasted it will deny to be the chief blessedness of our life. And especially to know what the last parting is, seems needful to give the utmost sanctity of tenderness to our relations with each other. . . . All the experience that makes my communion with your grief is summed up in a ‘God bless you,’ which represents the swelling of my heart now, as I write, thinking of you and your sense of what has been and is not.” GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans], writing to a friend who was feeling the first anguish of bereavement.

“And love lives on and hath a power to bless
When they who loved are hidden in the grave.”

LOWELL