“Dear Fanny,
It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress.
Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.
Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.
Your sincere friend,
A. Lincoln
Executive Mansion; Washington, December 23, 1862”
“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.”
— William Shakespeare
“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“He that conceals his grief finds no remedy for it.”
— Turkish proverb
“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.
They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of
overwhelming grief . . . and unspeakable love.”
— Washington Irving
“Those things that hurt, instruct.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“Tears are the silent language of grief.”
— Voltaire
“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
— Kahlil Gibran
Psalm 23
The LORD is my shepherd,
I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
He restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.
