Interminable as the darkness of night appeared, it at length gave way to the light of day, and I was ready with its dawn to take the train. But, oh, the weight of this grief that was crushing me! Had the serpents which attacked Laocoon, and crushed him to death by their dreadful strength, reached out and embraced me in their complicated folds, I could not have writhed in greater agony. I did not believe it was God’s will that my brother should die, and I could not say to that Holy Being, “Thy will be done.” In some way I felt a complicity in his death—a sort of personal responsibility. When my brother wrote to me from his adopted home in Texas that, having voted for secession, he believed it to be his duty to face the danger involved by that step, and fight for the principles of self-government vouchsafed by the Constitution of the United States, I said nothing in reply to discourage him, but rather I indicated that if I were eligible I should enter the contest. These, and such as these were the harrowing reflections which accused me of personal responsibility for the demon of war entering our household and carrying off the hope and prop of a widowed mother.
I found my poor stricken mother almost prostrate. The tidings of her son’s tragic death did the work apprehended by all who knew her nervous temperament. Outwardly calm and resigned, yet almost paralyzed by the blow, she was being tenderly cared for by our saintly neighbor, Mrs. Ammi Williams and her family, who will always be held in grateful remembrance by her daughters.
CHAPTER XXVI.
MY MOTHER’S DEATH.
Rev. Dr. John S. Wilson performs the funeral service
In sympathy with a disappointed people who had staked all and lost all in the vain effort to defend the inherited rights of freemen, and had not yet rallied from the depression occasioned by defeat, the spring of 1866 had withheld her charms, and, instead of donning a mantle of green, decorated with pansies, violets and primroses, hyacinths, bluebells and daffodils, verbenas, phlox and geraniums, and bloom of vine and briar in endless variety, the first day of April found her wounded, bleeding bosom wrapped in the habiliments of sorrow and despondency. A few brave old apple trees, as if to encourage the more timid, had budded and blossomed and sent forth sweet fragrance as of yore, and a few daring sprigs of grass suggested spring-time and sunny skies. Loneliness, oppressive and melancholy, and a spirit of unrest, prompted me to go to the depot in quest of something that never came, and my sister had stepped over to our neighbor, Mrs. Williams’.
Our mother loved the spring-time. It had always been her favorite season of the year. Fifty-nine vernal suns had brought inspiration and hope to her sensitive, tender heart, and given impulse to a checkered life; but now no day-star of hope shed its effulgence for her. As I mentioned in a former sketch, her only son had fallen mortally wounded upon the sanguinary battle-field of Franklin, and she had never recovered from the shock.
After a few months of patient endurance, an attack of paralysis had occurred, and during many days life and death contended for the victory. But the skill of good physicians, among them Dr. Joseph P. Logan, and faithful, efficient nursing, aided in giving her a comfortable state of health lasting through several months. But the fiat had gone forth, and now after a pathetic survey of earth, mingled with thankfulness even then to the God of the spring-time, she succumbed to the inevitable.