Do we know what it is that
dies in our dead, or even if anything dies? Whatever our religious
faith may be, there is at any rate one place where they cannot die.
That place is within ourselves; and, if this unhappy mother went
beyond the truth, she was yet nearer to it than those despairing ones
who nourish the mournful certainty that nothing survives of those whom
they loved. She felt too keenly what we do not feel keenly enough. She
remembered too much; and we do not know how to remember. Between the
two errors there is room for a great truth; and, if we have to choose,
hers is the error towards which we should lean. Let us learn to
acquire through reason that which a wise madness bestowed on her. Let
us learn from her to live with our dead and to live with them without
sadness and without terror. They do not ask for tears, but for a happy
and confident affection. Let us learn from her to resuscitate those
whom we regret. She called to hers, while we repulse ours; we are
afraid of them and are surprised that they lose heart and pale and
fade away and leave us forever. They need love as much as do the
living. They die, not at the moment when they sink into the grave, but
gradually as they sink into oblivion; and it is oblivion alone that
makes the separation irrevocable. We should not allow it to heap
itself above them. It would be enough to vouchsafe them each day a
single one of those thoughts which we bestow uncounted upon so many
useless objects: they would no longer think of leaving us; they would
remain around us and we should no longer understand what a tomb is;
for there is no tomb, however deep, whose stone may not be raised and
whose dust dispersed by a thought.

There would be no difference between the living and the dead if we but
knew how to remember. There would be no more dead. The best of what
they were dwells with us after fate has taken them from us; all their
past is ours; and it is wider than the present, more certain than the
future. Material presence is not everything in this world; and we can
dispense with it and yet not despair. We do not mourn those who live
in lands which we shall never visit, because we know that it depends
on us whether we go to find them. Let it be the same with our dead.
Instead of believing that they have disappeared never to return, tell
yourselves that they are in a country to which you yourself will
assuredly go soon; a country not so very far away. And, while waiting