A Dumb Sense Of Vast Loss

Mark Twain wrote the following upon receiving the news of the death of his daughter Susy Clemens.  It captures perfectly the feeling I had upon learning of the death of my friend Hugh.

"It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunderstroke like that and live.  There is but one reasonable explanation of it.  The intellect is stunned by the shock and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words.The power to realize their full import is mercifully wanting.  The mind has a dumb sense of vast lost-that is all.  It will take mind and memory months, and possibly years, to gather together the details and thus learn and know the full extent of the loss...It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete,and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster."

Or as the old hymn puts it, "I scarce can take it in."