I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.

This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pygmies while you were looking the other way.

I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.

Your coffin reached the monstrous hole. And a part of me went down into the muddy earth with you and lay down next to you and died with you.

Oft gay and honoured robes those tortures try:
We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.

The times that were most fun seemed always to be followed by sadness now, because it was when life started to feel like it did when she was with us that we realized how utterly gone she was.