Weekdays and Holidays

You wouldn't think there'd be much difference between weekdays and weekends - or between Monday holidays and other Mondays - when you're not going to an office to work. So, how come when I woke up this morning I thought, "Hmmm... Monday..." then, "Oh, good. It's a holiday." What difference does it make? But I know I'll give myself a little leeway deciding what to do today.

I just learned that Ray Schlather's daughter died in a car accident Saturday. She was 28 and a law student. I like Ray and Kathy. Strange thoughts come to mind. Like, how will they be able to bear driving past that spot just past the theatre? How will they ever celebrate the 4th of July again? Today is Michael's birthday. So I'm accutely aware of the struggle following the death of a child.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal- every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open- this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.

Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang?

Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament?

Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns?

….No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief … is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness- who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gayety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry?

Oh, the grave! – the grave!- It buries every error- covers every defect, extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.

… the grave of those we loved- what a place for meditation! There it is that we call up in long review the whole history of virtue and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us almost unheeded in the daily intercourse of intimacy-

Ay, go to the grave of buried love, and meditate!

Then weave thy chaplet of flowers, and strew the beauties of nature about the grave; console thy broken spirit, if thou canst, with these tender, yet futile tributes of regret; but take warning by the bitterness of this thy contrite affliction over the dead, and henceforth be more faithful and affectionate in the discharge of thy duties to the living.

Washington Irving
From The Rural Funeral