The death of St. Monica

St. Augustine's beautiful recollection of the loss of his mother, St. Monica (a great saint in her own right.)

I closed her eyes, and a great wave of sorrow surged into my heart. It would have overflowed in tears if I had not made a strong effort of will and stemmed the flow, so that the tears dried in my eyes. What a terrible struggle it was to hold them back! As she breathed her last, (my son) began to wail aloud and only ceased his cries when we all checked him. I, too, felt that I wanted to cry like a child, but a more mature voice within me, the voice of my heart, bade me keep my sobs in check, and I remained silent. For we did not think it right to mark my mother's death with weeping and moaning, because such lamentations are the usual accompaniment of death when it is thought of as a state of misery or as a total extinction. But she had not died in misery, nor had she wholly died. Of this we were certain, both because we knew what a holy life she had led, and also because our faith was real and we had sure reasons not to doubt it.

What was it, then, that caused me such deep sorrow? It can only have been because the wound was fresh, the wound I had received when our life together, which had been so precious to me, was suddenly cut off...

Then little by little my old feelings about your handmaid came back to me. I thought of her devoted love for you and the tenderness and patience she had shown to me, like the holy woman she was. Of all this I found myself suddenly deprived, and it was a comfort to me to weep for her and for myself and to offer my tears to you for her sake and for mine. The tears which I had been holding back streamed down, and I let them flow as freely as they would, making of them a pillow for my heart... And now, O Lord, I make you my confession in this book. Let any man read it who will... And if he finds that I sinned by weeping for my mother, even if only for a fraction of an hour, let him not mock me. For this was the mother, now dead and hidden a while from my sight, who had wept over me for many years so that I might live in your sight.