Letter 2020.102.41

Feb 24, 1902

Greensburg

My dear Miss Hartzell:

Thank you ever so much for your card and address. I was wishing I knew where to write to you. I have often wished I could speak to you again. To me, it seems years since my bright beautiful boy has gone home. Yes, Miss Hartzell, I can think of him now as happier than me for he was a good boy, but I have cried until my eyes have become so weak and my health so bad that our doctor told me unless I [love] up better, I would be an invalid for life. Then, I came to think how sinful it was.

But my Dear Miss Hartzell, you who have been to many

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sick and death, beets was it not hard. I could not kiss his face, not once or even hold his hand and my heart near broke when he said he never would forgive me. Yet, I knew he had no cause to say that get, I think, his mind held me, in some way, responsible for his misfortune, yet, I can't see how, unless it was the last time he was home. He had the offer of a position over here and, when he was undecided what to do, I, sometimes, feel if I had said take this offer here. But he had always decided those things for himself and I did not want to interfere. Had we been living, [into?], in our own house, he would have come home, I am sure, but it was, he seemed to think there was no room. I wrote to Mrs. Mellon and just addressed Homepathic Hospital. I don't

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know if she got it or not. I would so much like to know what he tried to tell his father when she called him in after he said good bye to me and oh, Miss Hartzell, if you know how I long to know of his last hours. I lie in bed and think and think long after his father is asleep and wonder if he thought he was going to die and if he said anything and if he got wild after Charlie said that to me. I was so stunned that I can't remember anything more what I done or said except, the next morning, when you were so kind and spoke so kind to me, I can not remember if Mrs. Mellon spoke at all to me. I remember I asked the minister to pray in the room where I was. I could not go in and I was afraid I would cry out or do something to make Charlie unhappy. One time

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long ago, he said he thought it awful, if one had to die, that so much fuss was made. He thought it would be hard enough to die without people carrying on and my brain seemed to contain nothing else. But don't make no noise, no fuss of any kind. I feel so sorry that the minister did not go in afterwards or as I thought he would pray for him when he came, I did not know that he did not pray at all in his room. Miss Hartzell, I did not think he was going to die until supper time and I think, then, I lost all hope, all nerve, for I could not stay in with him and it is agony to me, sometimes, when I think, perhaps, he missed me, but he did not want me to see him suffer. I know that is why he was more restless when I was at his bed. Once when Dr Lilly was there, he was telling him of a pain that was so bad on his chest after Dr.

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went away I ask him where it hurt him so and he said, oh, it is near all gone now." He never would complain when he was home and he never wanted you to bother doing anything when he was sick but, oh, one thing that grieves me so was the morning that Crosby died. Charlie begged me so to sit him on the rocking chair just a little while and I told him he could not. I told him he had no clothes on. He said I could wrap him in the blanket. I still told him "of course." When he turned his face from me and said, "Mother you never done anything I wanted you to do. It is all right" and I heard a sob in his voice. Miss Hartzel, had I known he was going to die, I would have had him sit on the chair a few moments if such a thing was possible. I have had