We had all known that it was too
much to hope that he should be one of those to be spared.
The black despair that had been hovering over me for hours closed
down now and enveloped all my senses. Everything was unreal. For a
time I was quite numb. But then, as I began to realize and to
visualize what it was to mean in my life that my boy was dead there
came a great pain. The iron of realization slowly seared every word
of that curt telegram upon my heart. I said it to myself, over and
over again. And I whispered to myself, as my thoughts took form, over
and over, the one terrible word: "Dead!"
I felt that for me everything had come to an end with the reading of
that dire message. It seemed to me that for me the board of life was
black and blank. For me there was no past and there could be no
future. Everything had been swept away, erased, by one sweep of the
hand of a cruel fate. Oh, there was a past, though! And it was in
that past that I began to delve. It was made up of every memory I had
of my boy. I fell at once to remembering him. I clutched at every
memory, as if I must grasp them and make sure of them, lest they be
taken from me as well as the hope of seeing him again that the
telegram had forever snatched away.
I would have been destitute indeed then. It was as if I must fix in
my mind the way he had been wont to look, and recall to my ears every
tone of his voice, every trick of his speech.
Pages:
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73