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When he was just nine years old, Abraham Lincoln’s mother died after a brief illness. In his presidential years, his eleven-year-old son, Willie, died from typhoid fever.
What kind of agony is born of losing a child whilst in charge of repairing a nation at war? I’m not sure we’ll ever know.
But when his longtime friend, William McCullough, passed, he wrote this letter to McCullough’s young daughter which gives us some insight into how he kept moving:
Dear Fanny
It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel…
