They will gradually sustain and comfort you in your hour of grief.
"And meanwhile consider how many sources of consolation already exist for you.

My brothers are still with you; the dignity of Gallio, the leisure of Mela, will protect you; the ever-sparkling mirth of my darling little Marcus will cheer you up; the training of my little favourite Novatilla will be a duty which will assuage your sorrow.

For your father's sake, too, though he is absent from you, you must moderate your lamentations.

Above all, your sister--that truly faithful, loving, and high-souled lady, to whom I owe so deep a debt of affection for her kindness to me from my cradle until now,--she will yield you the fondest sympathy and the truest consolation.
"But since I know that after all your thoughts will constantly revert to me, and that none of your children will be more frequently before your mind than I,--not because they are less dear to you than I, but because it is natural to lay the hand most often upon the spot which pains,--I will tell you how you are to think of me.

Think of me as happy and cheerful, as though I were in the midst of blessings; as indeed I am, while my mind, free from every care, has leisure for its own pursuits, and sometimes amuses itself with lighter studies, sometimes, eager for truth, soars upwards to the contemplation of its own nature, and the nature of the universe.