Aniela died this morning.
ROME, 5 December.
I might have been your happiness, and became your misfortune. I am the
cause of your death, for if I had been a different man, if I had not
been wanting in all principles, all foundations of life, there would
not have come upon you the shocks that killed you. I understood that
in the last moments of your life, and I promised myself I would follow
you. I vowed it at your dying bed, and my only duty is now near you.
To your mother I leave my fortune; my aunt I leave to Christ, in whose
love she will find consolation in her declining years, and I follow
you--because I must. Do you think I am not afraid of death? I am
afraid because I do not know what there is, and see only darkness
without end; which makes me recoil. I do not know whether there
be nothingness, or existence without space and time; perhaps some
midplanetary wind carries the spiritual monad from star to star to
implant it in an ever-renewing existence. I do not know whether there
be immense restlessness, or a peace so perfect as only Omnipotence and
Love can bestow on us. But since you have died through my "I do not
know," how could I remain here--and live?
The more I fear, the more I do not know,--the more I cannot let you go
alone; I cannot, Aniela mine,--and I follow. Together we shall sink
into nothingness, or together begin a new life; and here below where
we have suffered let us be buried in oblivion.