But in many cases there is no doubt that what our loved ones do for us after they are gone is quite as important as what they could have done for us had they stayed with us.

The memory of beautiful lives is a benediction, softened and made more rich and impressive by the sorrow which their departure caused.

The influence of such sacred memories is in a certain sense more tender than that of life itself.

Death transfigures our loved one, as it were, sweeping away the faults and blemishes of the mortal life, and leaving us an abiding vision, in which all that was beautiful, pure, gentle, and true in him remains to us.

We often lose friends in the competitions and strifes of earthly life, whom we would have kept forever had death taken them away in the earlier days when love was strong.