“Softly now the light of day,”
since my mother had asked for one of the old hymns; and besides the
usual Scriptural Burial Service, a friend, who was dear to me, read Mrs.
Browning’s “Sleep.”
It was all as I would have had it, and I looked on peacefully. If I
could have spoken I would have said: “You have buried me cheerfully, as
Christians ought, as a Christian ought to be.”
I was greatly touched, I must admit, at the grief of some of the poor,
plain people who followed my body on its final journey to the village
church-yard. The woman who sent the magenta geranium refused to be
comforted, and there were one or two young girls whom I had been so
fortunate as to assist in difficulties, who, I think, did truly mourn.
Some of my boys from the Grand Army were there, too,--some, I mean, whom
it had been my privilege to care for in the hospitals in the old war
days. They came in uniform, and held their caps before their eyes. It
did please me to see them there.
When the brief service at the grave was over, I would have gone home
with my mother, feeling that she needed me more than ever; but as I
turned to do so, I was approached by a spirit whose presence I had not
observed. It proved to be my father. He detained me, explaining that I
should remain where I was, feeling no fear, but making no protest, till
the Will governing my next movement might be made known to me. So I bade
my mother good-by, and Tom, as well as I could in the surprise and
confusion, and watched them all as they went away. She, as she walked,
seemed to those about her to be leaning only upon her son. But I beheld
my father tenderly hastening close beside her, while he supported her
with the arm which had never failed her yet, in all their loving lives.
Therefore I could let her go, without distress.
The funeral procession departed slowly; the grave was filled; one of the
mill-girls came back and threw in some arbor vitæ and a flower or
two,--the sexton hurried her, and both went away. It grew dusk, dark. I
and my body were left alone together.
Of that solemn watch, it is not for me to chatter to any other soul.
Memories overswept me, which only we two could share. Hopes possessed me
which it were not possible to explain to another organization. Regret,
resolve, awe, and joy, every high human emotion excepting fear, battled
about us. While I knelt there in the windless night, I heard chanting
from a long distance, but yet distinct to the dead, that is to the
living ear. As I listened, the sound deepened, approaching, and a group
of singing spirits swept by in the starlit air, poised like birds, or
thoughts, above me:
“_It is sown a natural--it is raised a spiritual body._”
“_Death! where is thy sting?--Grave!--thy victory?_”
“_Believing in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live._”
I tried my voice, and joined, for I could no longer help it, in the
thrilling chorus. It was the first time since I died, that I had felt
myself invited or inclined to share the occupations of others, in the
life I had entered. Kneeling there, in the happy night, by my own
grave, I lifted all my soul and sense into the immortal words, now for
the first time comprehensible to me:
“_I believe, I believe in the resurrection of the dead._”
It was not long thereafter that I received the summons to return. I
should have been glad to go home once more, but was able to check my own
preference without wilful protest, or an aching heart. The conviction
that all was well with my darlings and myself, for life and for death,
had now become an intense yet simple thing, like consciousness itself.