A sick man’s youthful wife at bedside cried, “Don’t leave me, darling! Wait for me! My soul is as prepared as yours to fly away to afterworlds!”
He made the trip alone.
The widow’s father, a sagacious man, did not attempt to stanch her tears; he let them flow. At length he tried to comfort her.
“My dear,” he said, “you’ll turn your insides out and in yourself you’ll drown. You do the dead no good, besides. And meanwhile, other men still live. I don’t, of course, prescribe as cure immediate remarriage; but perhaps, when more time’s passed, you’ll let me introduce you to a young prospective husband quite as debonair and handsome as your first . . . ?”
“A nunnery is spouse enough for me,” she sighed.
Her father left her to digest in peace her sadness.
Months elapsed. She grew weary of wearing always black; each day she titivated her ensemble, till the only scraps of mourning she retained were merely ornamental trimmings. Then admirers flocked around her, welcome where they recently had been rebuffed; full soon there followed dances, games, and laughter where grim silence recently had reigned. She seemed indeed to bathe, each night and morning, in the fountain of revivifying youth.
Her father feared no more the influence of the deceased, and said no more about replacements.
It was she who had to ask, “What happened to that young and handsome man you promised me?”
Although a widow’s tears and sighs at first seem uncontrollable, no grief for long is inconsolable.