Post-mortem
kindnesses
Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your affection
sealed and laid away--until your friends are dead. Fill their
present days with tenderness. Speak your words of commendation,
while their ears can hear them! The things you mean to say when
they are dead and gone--say before they go! The flowers you mean
to send for their coffins--send beforehand to brighten and
sweeten their homes, before they leave them forever!
I have often said--and I know I speak for thousands of other
weary, plodding toilers--that if my friends have vases laid
away, filled with the perfumes of sympathy and affection, which
they intend to break over my dead body--I
would far rather they would bring them out now along my toilsome
days and open them--when I can enjoy them and be refreshed by
them!
Post-mortem kindnesses do not cheer the burdened spirit. Tears
falling on the icy brow of death, make poor and too tardy
atonement for coldness, neglect, and cruel selfishness in life's
long, struggling years. Appreciation, after the heart is stilled
in death--has no inspiration for the departed one; it comes too
late, when it is pronounced only in funeral eulogies. Flowers
piled on the coffin--cast no fragrance backward over weary days.
J. R. Miller, 1840 - 1912
