Our angel flew off to heaven, last night at three o’clock.
Letter to Marius Suzanne, 26 June 1825, EO VI n188
Writing to his mother about, his niece, Caroline de Boisgelin’s illness and death, Eugene said:
She always spoke of heaven and of the happiness of being in the presence of God with the simplicity and assurance of a child going back to her home with joy to rest in the embrace of her Father. No death struggles, and not the least fear of death; on the contrary, this thought only amused her because, with an idea far older than her age, she saw death as the beginning of her real happiness and she only spoke of it calmly and with her heart at peace.
Once you know all these details, you will not be able to prevent yourself any more than us of entering into sentiments of adoration and enchantment. In all this there is something extraordinary and totally supernatural. If it were someone aged twenty, I would be edified, but in a twelve year old it is marvelous, it is a prodigy. How can one ever understand that a child of this age never consented to unite her prayers to those of us praying for her healing?
… Dear and good mother, let us thus arm ourselves with strength and with courage. Let us rekindle our faith, and stifle our natural reactions as we give thanks to God for having chosen from our family a privileged soul, an angel who, having already entered into her glory, will praise God eternally and be our advocate in our needs.
Letter to his mother, 28 June 1825, General Archives Rome, AGR MJ I-1
“I’ve told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Death, particularly my own death is not something that I make a habit of thinking of unless it is put right before me, as it has in a way this past week. Because when I start to think about death, particularly my own, I find myself dragging out of the dark the old measuring stick that I have used to measure my life. You know the one that has only the “bad” levels on it, the list of failures and imperfections and not any goodness. The one that measures if I will be ‘good enough’ to enter the kingdom of heaven, the one that measures if I will earn enough to merit joining God. The one that secretly seems to shout out that curse that I will never amount to anything good. So I quickly cram that measuring stick, those fears back down and not give them the light of day – easier not to think of death in any way.
But I do know that death will greet me one day, and there is even that small part that I look forward to in a way, for then I will, as Caroline thought of it, then I will be finally and at last going home to rest fully and be in the full embrace of my God, one with him fully in every way.
It is only now, very recently, that I have begun to look at myself and see the goodness as well as the weakness, the both and. I have never done anything incredibly great or good as my friend Tom put it, but I have done some small things well. And my being, well hopefully it is becoming stronger, moving from the back to the front.
I don’t really care about the idea of balloons when I die, but I think I should like the sky to be blue with the sun out and that there be birds in the air, freely riding on the currents of air. And for those who have known me and think of me that they look up, see and say – there is the glory of God.