Desolating Loss

Herman Hooker, Uses of Adversity, and the Provisions of Consolation (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1850), 105-7, 109-10:

We had a friend loved and lovely. He had genius and learning. He had all qualities, great and small, blending in a most attractive whole—a character as much to be loved as admired, as truly gentle as it was great, and so combining opposite excellences, that each was beautified by the other. Between him and her who survives him there was a reciprocity of taste and sympathy—a living in each other, so that her thoughts seemed but the pictures of his—her mind but a glass that showed the very beauty that looked into it, or rather became itself that beauty—dying in his dying she did not all die. Her love, the heart's animation, lifted her up; her sense of loss was merged for a while in her love and confidence of his good estate. In strong and trusting thoughts of him as a happy spirit, and of God as his and her portion, she rested as in a cloud. A falling from this elevation was truly a coming to one's self from God—a leaving of heaven for earth. Let her tell the rest in words as beautiful as they are true to nature: «My desolating loss I realise more and more. For many weeks his peaceful and triumphant departure left such an elevating influence on my mind, that I could only think of him as a pure and happy spirit. But now my feelings have become more selfish, and I long for the period to arrive, when I may lie down by his side, and be reunited in a nobler and more enduring union than even that which was ours here.» [...]

If there is anything about us which good hearts will reverence, it is our grief on the loss of those we love. It is a condition in which we seem to be smitten by a Divine hand, and thus made sacred. It is a grief, too, which greatly enriches the heart, when rightly borne. There may be no rebellion of the will, the sweetest sentiments towards God and our fellow-beings may be deepened, and still the desolation caused in the treasured sympathies and hopes of the heart gives a new colour to the entire scene of life. The dear affections which grew out of the consanguinities and connexions of life, next to those we owe to God, are the most sacred of our being; and if the hopes and revelations of a future state did not come to our aid, our grief would be immoderate and inconsolable, when these relations are broken by death.