from the Master by Colm Toibin, about Henry James, wonderful writing.
Henry returned to his parents’ house in Boston. He could not have had the silence of the house to himself, with only his Aunt Kate, whom he loved, for company. He could not have slept in his father’s bed, feeling it his duty somehow to do so, nor come to possess the house in all its aura of absence, waiting to be filled with as open a heart as he did now that William (his brother) was so far away.
About a week after his father was buried, a letter came in William’s hand addressed to Henry James. Since Henry was awaiting news of William, it did not occur to him that the letter had been written to his father and that he should not open it. He had read the first paragraph before he realized his mistake, even though, as he subsequently noticed, the letter had begun ‘Dear Father’. He held the letter for several days, telling no one about it, and then on a Sunday morning, the last day of the year, when it was quiet, the snow deep and the light scarce, he made his way to the cemetery where his parents lay close together. He was alone and he made sure as he approached the grave that no one was watching him.
He hoped that his presence now might help his parents to feel the great ease he wished for them, to know how grateful he was to them and how raw with sadness he remained at their departure from the earth. He took William’s letter out of his pocket and in a voice clear and audible he began to read it to the old ghost for whom it had been intended. But gradually, as the tears came, he reduced his voice to a whisper and several times he had to stop and put his hand over his face as these words, meant so tenderly, moved him more than any of his own words, or any words about his father he had heard since he arrived. He forced himself to continue.
“As for the other side, and Mother, and all our possible meeting I can’t say anything. More than ever at this moment do I feel that if that were true, all would be solved and justified. And it comes strongly over me in bidding you good-bye how life is but a day and expresses mainly but a single note. It is so much like the art of bidding an ordinary good-night. Good night my sacred old Father ! If I don’t see you again – Farewell ! A blessed farewell !”
Somewhere in the depths of the cold earth, Henry felt, his father’s spirit lingered, enough for Henry to long for the letter to last, so that he would not have to walk away in silence, leaving his parents in a place he now viewed as the most sacred and forgiving. He hated the barreness of the winter season and the sounds of his own footsteps on the ice as he moved away.