When I'm Dead. . .

Some of the genealogists and researchers, all female I might add, were discussing the fact that men in the 1800s and 1900s didn’t grieve long over a dead wife because they needed a woman to do all the work around the house and raise their children, so they remarried rather quickly after the burial of the first wife.  The wives of the time must have watched this happen to their friends and realized that it might happen in her marriage as well if she were to die young. One woman wrote her husband a letter and placed in a book that he would eventually peruse. This letter, rimmed with tears, was written before the husband was aware that death was fixing its grasp upon his lovely companion.  

“When this shall reach your eyes, dear, I shall have passed away forever and the lips you have so often pressed are cold and sod will be growing green over my grave and hide forever from your sight the dust of one who has so often nestled close to your warm heart. For many long and sleepless nights, when all my thoughts were at rest, I have wrestled with the consciousness of approaching death, until at last it has forced itself on my mind. Although to you and to others, it might now seem but the nervous imagination of a girl, yet it is so.  Many weary hours have passed in the endeavor to reconcile myself to leaving you, whom I love so well, and this bright world of sunshine and beauty,  and hard indeed, is it to struggle on silently and alone, with the sure conviction that I am about to leave forever and go down alone into the dark valley.  But I know in whom I have trusted, and leaning upon His arm, I fear no evil. Don't blame me for keeping all this from you. How could I subject you, of all others, to such sorrow as I feel in parting, when time will soon make it apparent to you? I could have wished to live, if only to be at your side when your time shall come, and pillowing your heart upon my breast wipe the death tears from your brow, and command your departing spirit to His maker's presence, involved in woman's prayer.  But it is not to be, so I submit.  Yours is the privilege of watching through long and dreary nights, for the spirit’s final flight, and of transferring my sinking head from your breast to my savior’s bosom. And you shall have my last thought, the last faint pressure of my hand and the last feeble kiss shall be yours, and even when flesh and heart shall have failed me, my eyes shall still rest upon yours, until glazed by death and our spirit shall hold one fast communion until gently fading from my view the last of earth, you shall mingle with the better world, where partings are unknown. Well do I know this spot where you will lay me; often have we stood by the place as we watched the mellow sunset as it glanced its quivering flashes through the leaves, and burnished the grassy mounds around us with stripes of gold. Each, perhaps, has thought that one of us would come alone, and whichever it might be, your name would be on the stone. We love the spot, and I know you'll love it nonetheless when you see the grass that grows over your darling's grave. I know you'll go often alone there when I am laid there, and my spirit shall be with you.  It shall whisper among the waving branches, “I am not lost but gone before.”

Talk about a guilt trip.  That woman knew how to write a letter.