The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-02-13
Stronger Than Death
BY BRUCE CATION

very old lady died in New York the other day.
For forty years she had been widow living IN soil
tude in a furnished room and cooking her own meals
over little hot plate on the bureau
Since she left some $4,000 in the bank, public
officials made search Of her effects to see If they
could find trace Of any heirs. In their search they
turned up bundles of all the love letters her husband
had written her They found boxes filled With musCy
keepsakes-faded gloves pressed rose or two yell
lowed dance programs and the like They also drew
from her landlady curious story.
During all the years she lived here she kept
pretty much to herself" said the landady. "She
did tell me once that she cooked her own meals
and always set place at her little table Tor her
dead husband, and looked at his empty chair While
she ate"
The old lady had been married just three years
when her husband died. Three years OF married life
then forty lonely years of memories What vigil
But perhaps she was not to be pltied quite so
much as may think.
Companionship is strange thing, hard to ana
lyze. It is more than the daily round of personal
contacts; than the ever mounting sum OF
understanding words and unself1sh actions that go
with all happy marriages; more than the endless
repetition Of little joys and sorrows, mutually shared
Most Of all, it is spiritual thing; blending OF
sympathies into steady comradeship that does not
need words to manifest itself, that suStainS and
enobles almost without being recognized.
1t does not come to all married folk, as our clut-
tered divorce courts testify; but when it does come
it ends all doubts and all fears and lasts-we may
say-forever, so that death itself can not diminish
its force.
that grew up between this woman and her husband
during the three years they were together.
Why, then, should we feel that this woman needed
pity? Why should feel that her life must
have been desperately unhappy? There is hap
pness that expresses itself in laughter and song and
dancing, and there is happiness that it too deep
too solemn too peaceful for such things; happiness
that includes grief and and loneliness within
itself, being strong that it transcend them
and rise superior to them. And it must have been
such happiness, born of deep comradeShip, that
led this woman to share her little table, at every
meal, with the vacant chair of her dead husband.
Perhaps, if the truth were known, this lonely
old woman more fortunate than most of us.
For comradeship does not come to everyone; most
of us are lonely, not because we have lost true
comrade, but because have never really had one.
She had had hers; for three years, at least, she
had known the peace and Joy that born of inner
kinship and understanding; and they bore her up
for forty years.
We talk of ghosts What are they anyway? Was
there ghost at her little table every day-a friendly
phantom bearing message of hope and cheer? Or
did the lonely widow discover that truth which many
men, through all the ages, have caught glimmer-
ings of now and then-that are all wraiths, bear
ing up little bodies for time and then quitting them
for something and better, triumphing over sor-
row and death by virtue of our ndiSsoluble union
with creature Of another world?