Words in Pain

I spent yesterday finishing Words in Pain by Olga Jacoby--insofar a book this profoundly honest can ever be "finished."

This unforgettable book of letters from Olga (who would die in 1913 at the age of 38) describes her feelings about impending death--the worst of which is leaving her four adopted children and her beloved husband.  (Her fourth daughter, an infant, was adopted shortly before her death--as her family had means to provide care and nurses for their family and she acted on her fear that abandoned babies would not have families to love them.)

She doesn't reveal a great deal about her illness, as her very active and keen mind is concerned always with her family and her philosophy about life.  One of her great-granddaughters, Jocelyn, writes an afterword for the book that tells more about her, her marriage to Jack, and what became of her four children.   She also was a kind of pioneer in the "right to die" movement.  When her pain became unbearable in not being able to be an active part of her family's life, she chose to take enough sleeping pills to end her own life.

She wants Jack to marry again and go on with his life.  She wants him to "Marry again as soon as you can and forget me as much as will be necessary for your future happiness."

"Of course, if you have a daughter, you must give her my name.  She could not be happier than I have been."

Here are a few of the lines I have marked:

"Love, like strength and courage, is a strange thing; the more we give the more we find we have to give.  Once given out, love is set rolling for ever to amass more, resembling an avalanche by the irresistible force with which it sweeps aside all obstacles, but utterly unlike in its effect, for it brings happiness wherever it passes and lands destruction nowhere."

She quotes a Mrs. A.J. Stanley:

"He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much, who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children, who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has made the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given the best he had, whose life was an inspiration, whose memory is a benediction."

"Oh, Doctor, what pain to realize how great, how beautiful religion was meant to be, and to see how bedraggled it has become, all through lack of courage and veracity and too much greed for money and conventionalities."