I think sometimes that I can bear the pain for today and sometimes I even think I can bear it for a month, but the thought of a lifetime without her is too hard, Meg. Father talks of God’s will and of happier times to come, and tells me that I will see Beth again when I, too, cross the river to the Celestial City that awaits us all. But, Meg, I’m not a saint, as Father is, I can’t bear the thought of such a separation, and there are times when my heart aches so I think it will burst my breast with grief.

The days are tolerable, mostly. The rain has stopped—mercifully—and I’m able to busy myself about the household tasks and make myself useful if nothing else—you know I’m always better when there’s work at hand. But the nights are hard, and do not grow easier. Marmee and Father go early to bed these days, and I am left alone with nothing but the longing for my Beth that I think will never, ever cease. This evening, unable to sleep, I rose from my bed, lit the lamp, and went, as I often do, to the book that my dear German friend gave me when I was in New York. You remember he gave me such a fine copy of Shakespeare for a Christmas present, telling me I should find in it everything I need. Usually when I open it, I will find something comical or philosophical to make me smile or to do me good, but tonight the book fell open, as if of its own will, to poor King Lear lamenting his dead Cordelia—and when I read those saddest of all sad lines ever written—‘Thou’lt come no more / Never, never, never, never, never’—I laid my head down on the book’s pages and wept and wept, very quietly so as not to wake Marmee, until even I could weep no more.

Is it very wicked to feel such sorrow, Meg? Father says that if I trust in God, He will comfort me, but I will tell you this, Meg—although I’d never tell Marmee or Father—that there are times in my wickedness when I am tempted to hate the God Who has been so cruel as to make us all suffer so. And—is this very wicked and selfish indeed?—it sometimes seems to me that He has made me to suffer the most, for Marmee and Father have each other, and you have John and your two precious little ones, and Milady Amy in Europe has Teddy now for her very own knight in shining armor, while I had no one but Beth, and now that she’s taken from me, I’m all wrong, Meg, all so very wrong.

Dear Meg, you do know—don’t you?—that missing Beth so much don’t mean that I love you any the less—if anything, you and Amy are the more dear to me than ever, now that we have lost her. I had three sisters but now have two, and am still a lucky woman for it, for some have none. One day, perhaps, I shall be able to be comforted by that.