He was ill only a few hours.
PELI, VILLA LAURA, 22 March.
Death is such a gulf, and though we know that all have to go thither,
yet when it swallows up one of our dear ones, we who remain on the
brink are torn with fear, sorrow, and despair. On that brink all
reasoning leaves us, and we only cry out for help which cannot come
from anywhere. The only solace and comfort lies in faith, but he who
is deprived of that light gets well-nigh maddened by the impenetrable
darkness. Ten times a day it seems to me impossible, too horrible,
that death should be the end of everything,--and then again, a dozen
times I feel that such is the case.
23 March.
When I arrived from Ploszow I found my father so much better that it
never even entered my mind that the end could be so near. What strange
twists there are in the human mind. God knows how sincerely I rejoiced
when I found my father so much better than I had thought, and yet
because throughout that anxious journey I had fancied him sick unto
death, and already saw myself kneeling at his coffin, I was sorry
for my wasted anxieties. Now the memory of this fills me with keen
remorse.
How thoroughly unhappy is the individual whose heart and soul have
lost their simplicity. Thus not less bitter, not less of a reproach is
the remembrance that at my father's deathbed there were two persons in
me: one of them the son full of anguish, who gnawed his hands to keep
back his sobs; the other the philosopher, who studied the psychology
of death.
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