Reflections On The Loss Of A Friend

    [Usually, it is my Editor-at-Large and one of my best friends, Chow Magee, who writes these little bracketed notes when he thinks it is necessary. Today it is I, who, in this case, has that sad honor. The Golf Room lost an extended family member the other day. Ana Magee, wife of the aforementioned Chow, passed away quietly and peacefully at their home in Silver Spring, Maryland on July 30th. I wish I had gotten to know her better. I wish I had visited more often, and I wish they had come north more often. But I know enough to know that she was Chow’s soulmate and that they laughed with each other, and loved each other. And that is enough for me. If you are reading this and you know Chow and were unaware of Ana’s passing, I am putting up the link here to the funeral home that is holding the Celebration of Life Service tomorrow, July 3rd, from 2:00-4:00 pm. Whatever your beliefs are, keep Chow and Ana in your thoughts and prayers.]

    There are evils which happen out of the common course of nature, against which it is no reproach not to be provided. A flash of lightning intercepts the traveler in his way. The concussion of an earthquake heaps the ruins of cities upon their inhabitants. But other miseries time brings, though silently yet visibly, forward by its even lapse, which yet approach us unseen, because we turn our eyes away, and seize us unresisted, because we could not arm ourselves against them but by setting them before us.

    That it is vain to shrink from what cannot be avoided, and to hide that from ourselves which must some time be found, is a truth which we all know, but which all neglect, and, perhaps, none more than the speculative reasoner, whose thoughts are always from home, whose eye wanders over life, whose fancy dances after meteors of happiness kindled by itself, and who examines every thing rather than his own state.

    Nothing is more evident than that the decays of age or terminal illness must end in death; yet there is no soul, who does not believe that they may yet live another year; and there is none who does not, upon that same principle, hope another year for his parent or his loved one; but that fallacy will be in time detected; the last year, the last day, must come. It has come, and is past. The life which made my dear friend’s life so happy is at an end, and the gates of death are shut upon my friend’s prospects.

    The loss of a friend, or soulmate, upon whom the whole heart is fixed, to whom every wish and endeavor tended, is a state of dreary desolation, in which the mind looks abroad impatient of itself, and finds nothing but emptiness and horror. Ana’s blameless life, her artless tenderness, the pious simplicity, the modest resignation, the patient sickness, and the quiet death…are remembered only to add value to our loss, to aggravate regret for what cannot be amended, to deepen sorrow for what cannot be recalled.

    These are the calamities by which Providence gradually disengages us from the love of life. Other evils fortitude may repel, or hope may mitigate; but irreparable privation leaves nothing to exercise resolution or flatter expectation. The dead cannot return, and nothing is left us here but languishment and grief.

    Most of us are reconciled that this is the course of nature; that whoever lives long must outlive those whom he loves and honors. Such is the condition of our present existence, that life must one time lose its associations, and every inhabitant of the earth must walk downward to the grave alone and unregarded, without any partner of his joy or grief, without any interested witness of his misfortunes or success.

    Misfortune, indeed, he may yet feel; for where is the bottom of the misery of man? And what is success to him that has none to enjoy it? Because happiness is not found in self-contemplation; it is perceived only when it is reflected from another. Ana and Chow without a doubt, reflected utter joy and happiness in each other.

    We know little of the state of departed souls, because such knowledge is not necessary to a good life. Reason deserts us at the brink of the grave, and can give no further intelligence. But revelation, especially for believers, which Ana certainly was, is not wholly silent. It is said, “There is joy in the angels of Heaven over one sinner that repenteth;” and, surely, this joy is not incommunicable to souls disentangled from the body, and made like angels.

    So let hope therefore dictate what revelation does not confute, that the union of souls may still remain; and that we who are struggling with sin, sorrow, and infirmities, may have our part in the attention and kindness of those who have finished their course, and are now receiving their reward. Rest in peace, Ana. We'll take care of Chow for you.