His name was dropped a line, like a signature.
It was coming slowly, with hesitations and false starts, and I asked: “Are you tired, Frederick? Or am I?”
“Both,” he said. “This is not the simplest thing I ever did.... I am not tired, as you understand weariness, but it is easier sometimes to get things through than others.”
The next evening—the last we had with Frederick at that time—his first messages were personal, expressing his desire to “talk straight” to other members of the family.
“But there’s no hurry,” he went on. “We’ve all eternity together now.... Only one thing can separate us. If you doubt my existence, I shall still exist, but your doubt will destroy the thread that links us like a telegraph-wire, only more closely and warmly. So you must not backslide, for my sake as well as your own.”
“Why don’t you stay on?” he asked presently. “I can reach you, but not so definitely for a while to your sense, and actual speech with you is keen joy. Tell Dad ...”—the erasure is his own—“... the family I want to talk to them, too. Let’s have a reunion. One that won’t leave me out. I want to be in.” Rapidly and strongly, he underlined the last words three times.
His mother promised that the family festivals should be held again, in the full consciousness that he was there with them.
“Thank you, Mother dearest. You don’t know how we hate being left out.” When she explained that they were “left out” ignorantly, rather than intentionally, he continued: “No, we know you don’t mean to leave us out. But you—and we, too—would be so much happier if you knew we were there and we could know you were not grieving. You see, we are really nearer to you than you are to each other, and only memory tells us why you grieve. There is no reason for grief in what you call death and we call knowledge.”
“Why hasn’t all this been told to us before?” she demanded. “It was cruel not to let us know it!”