Free Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

together. I went into love with Virgil, and of course we were not the only ones there. To be in love with Virgil was to be there, in love, with his parents, his family, his place, his baby. When he became lost to our living love in this world, by knowing what it meant to me I couldn’t help knowing what it meant to the others. That was our kindness. It saved us, but it was hard to bear.
    We knew, always, more than we said. One of us lying awake in the night would know that the others probably were lying awake too, but nobody ever said so. In the daytime it seemed to me that we were all kept standing upright, balanced ever so delicately, by our kind silence. Sometimes it seemed that one word, one outcry, would flatten us all.
    The thought that Virgil was dead didn’t come upon us suddenly, like “news.” It just wore itself deeper and deeper into us day by day.
    The difference between me and Mr. and Mrs. Feltner, as I had to see and feel even in my own grief, was that they were old and I was young. I was filled with life, with my life and Virgil’s life, with the life of our baby, and with other lives that might, in time, come to me. But the Feltners had begun to be old. Life had quit coming to them, and was going away.
    I was young enough for life to be generous with me. The husband I lost in the war, as it turned out, was not to be my only husband. The war that Virgil died in Nathan survived and came home from. But Mr. Feltner lost his only son, his only begotten son. I would watch him go out to his work every day, and I would see that he was going alone, without Virgil who once had gone with him, and I would know that it was going to be that way for him for all the rest of his days.
    I would watch Mrs. Feltner when the morning was ending and dinnertime was coming, and she would say what she didn’t need to say but always said, “Nettie, put the biscuits in” or “Start the hoecake, Net,” and I would know that when two for so long had been expected, now only one would arrive. And this would not change for her either for as long as she would live.
    And yet Mr. Feltner would come in smiling. They would greet each other, old lovers, old friends, happy to see each other. He would say hello to Nettie. He would pass some little joke or compliment to me, and I would try to have something to say back. He would go to the sink and wash his hands, and we would sit down to our meal.
    Love held us. Kindness held us. We were suffering what we were living by.
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    I began to know my story then. Like everybody’s, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. From the time I was a girl I have never been far from it. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.
    Sometimes too I could see that love is a great room with a lot of doors, where we are invited to knock and come in. Though it contains all the world, the sun, moon, and stars, it is so small as to be also in our hearts. It is in the hearts of those who choose to come in. Some do not come in. Some may stay out forever. Some come in together and leave separately. Some come in and stay, until they die, and after. I was in it a long time with Nathan. I am still in it with him. And what about Virgil? Once, we too went in and were together in that room. And now in my
tenderness of remembering it all again, I think I am still there with him too. I am there with all the others, most of them gone but some who are still here, who gave me love and called forth love from me. When I number them over, I am surprised how many there are.
    And so I have to say that another of the golden threads is gratitude.
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