The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
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My dear Beryl, I don’t know enough about life with God after death to know if you’re aware of what goes on here this side of the veil; but just in case you do, I’d like to say a few things on behalf of me and mine.
You didn’t live very long but you showed us that a full life can be lived in a relatively short time and in the past few years you taught us that a bright and cheerful life can be lived in the middle of a lot of serious pain. There’s no point in my pretending that we grieve your leaving as much or that we’ll miss you as much as your immediate family—Ken and Bob and Cheryl and Jim and your mother are peculiarly yours and you theirs. So it should be; and it’s their privilege to feel more deeply than the rest of us. They’ll feel the awful ache of your absence long after we’ve become pretty well adjusted to it. Still, your kindness and generosity of heart, your openness and your loyalty to friends, your warm hospitality and the other qualities for which you have become widely known, mean that you've left a lot of tearful and lonely people behind; tearful and already lonely for you.
Thank you for coming into our lives and leaving them better than they were, better than they would have been if you hadn’t come. Thank you for giving us one more rich reason for wanting to “make it”. By God’s good grace and his enabling strength we’ll come looking for you soon and we’ll know where to find you.
[I wish all those that read this could have had the pleasure of knowing her.]
