“OUT OF THE DEPTHS“
by John Brewer Gibson (1907-1983)
Three times the raven wing of the Death Angel has cast its chilling shadow over this family.
Fifteen years past, our sons, Joe and Bert, died together in the flood waters of the Little Wabash. Now, our youngest son, Frank, horribly broken, has been snatched from our very midst. Shattered, as was Frank’s young body, lies our faith.
Out of the depths of blackness, of bleakness, we face the eternal WHY?; we peer for a glimmer of hope. Our anguish, sometimes too deep for tears, sometimes reduces us to the level of Words-worth’s Michael who “never lifted up a single stone.”
As I write, rain cries on the window pane, spilling cold tears upon my sorrowing heart.
Not only is this our third trip around; we are ages older now, our responses are slowed, our resiliency is nearly nil, our will to live is blunted, our world is very small.
Our head is bloody — and bowed.
And with Tennyson we mourn:
” —O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!”
Defeatist attitude — sniveling — unhealthy ? Only he who has looked down into the dear, dead faces of three of his grown sons may fairly judge us!
Time is a healer. And I, whose faith is not strong, gather a grain of comfort from Whittier, whose faith was implicit:
“Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress trees; Who, hopeless, lays his dead away Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play.
“And from the lips of Jesus Himself: “Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.”
And from the hauntingly beautiful strains and poignant, tremulant thought-expressions of Alice Hawthorne’s hymn — now more than ever my favorite — Whispering Hope.
(from Remember Me, Volume Two, John Brewer Gibson 1907-1983, Book #825, Richland County Genealogy Society, Olney, Illinois)