MORNING AGAIN
Death has its by-products, and the greatest of these is love. The best
of human nature comes from its deep source to the surface; families
are reunited; people grow gentle. Someone has vanished from among
us. Now we know her as she truly was; the faults are forgotten, the
dusty details lost; we see her whole life now, a great human round; we
see her soul, miraculous and great. No one will ever fill her niche.
Something has gone from us. Something has gone out of our house and our
lives.
Now the mystery of life comes home to us. Here is the clay that once
was woman. Whither has gone the woman? And to this end each one of us
must come; through this strange change each one of us must pass. There
will come a moment, real as this present moment, when each of us will
meet the event. What next? Whither? Out of life we are born. Who shall
say that we do not pass out into life? Who knows but what this mother
is real as ever, the life enduring, the form changing? Who knows but
what this air and this room are charged with her? Who knows but what,
standing here at the coffin, we are steeped in her?
Gentle were the brothers with Edith; full of love and understanding.
Gentle was Frank, renewed and purified. Gentle and wholly forgiving was
Edith. Why bother about dusty human problems? Beneath all faults there
was the divine. These men and this woman looked on each other now as
souls--all human, all the same. They forgot the ugly frailties. And so
Edith and Frank met heart to heart, soul to soul, and were each glad
that the other lived and was near. In the presence of death all life
is holy; we understand that the criminal, too, was a human being, that
somewhere in him he carried about all miracles.
Mr. Grupp, the good man, spoke a few words at the head of the coffin
the next evening. The brothers and Frank and Edith with bowed heads and
open hearts stood about him. He spoke simply, and merely because the
need was great, as he looked down on the still face:
“She was a good woman. Thirty years I’ve known her. She worked hard;
she was very kind to people. She suffered much. Not for herself she
worked. For her children, for her husband. Now she is gone. We shall
never see her any more. She goes again with her husband. She was the
best friend I had. Always I could come here and she was glad to see me.
Now she will never be here any more.” The tears trickled and he let
them course without shame. “She never thought of herself, but always
of her girl and her boys. The best mother was she I knew. But now she
is gone; she is dead. Dust to dust!” And then he spoke fervently in
Hebrew, “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of
the Lord!”
Friends and relatives called; Frank’s father and mother came, and the
little thin woman took Edith to her heart. Zug slipped in, and wept in
a corner. Edith went over to him:
“Mr. Zug, soon Frank and I will marry. You will call on us then?”
“God bless you!” said Zug, and went his way with handkerchief to eyes.
Nell came, too, for a moment, and kissed Edith, and called her a brave
girl.
And so the two days passed over the darkened parlor, and the little
group followed the body to the City of the Dead; ashes fell and
flowers; the first spadeful of gravel, like hail on the heart; and the
sweet Earth closed over the sweet Earth.
Then came the first empty night, with its gnawing pain, its sense of
loss, its hollowness and vacancy. Spite of cheerful talk at supper,
spite of gentleness and good humor, the house was empty. The place at
table, the void bedroom, the still parlor, all showed a gash of loss.
It was a restless night of heartache. But with morning the world cried
out to youth again. Work had to be done; people met; hunger awoke
again; the blood took its old stride. The city roared on unconscious of
a name lost on the roll-call. The brothers went forth to work; Frank
sallied down Grand Street; and Edith was busy with housework. And so
all of them were sweetly dustied up with life again; the work in hand
loomed large; one after another the divine angels of their natures sank
back into the depths; one after another the old imps flew up and broke
loose; and human were they, very human again--just people. Yet possibly
a streak of something new remained, a new mellowness not quite lost.