Letter 30
To my dear brother,
You have written to console me on the death of my brother Fronimian, and I receive your letter with gratitude even as I find myself uncertain how to respond. The conventions of consolation are a little strange to me in this moment: the insistence that the dead are better off, that grief is inappropriate for a Christian, that we should rejoice — I know all these arguments, I believe them in a certain sense, and they do not at this moment touch the actual fact of my brother's absence.
I am not questioning the resurrection. I believe it. What I am experiencing is simply the fact that my brother is not here, and will not be here, and that there was a conversation we were going to have that we will now not have until the other side of death. That is a real loss, and I think it is permissible to feel it as such.
What I have found helpful is this: Augustine's observation that our love for the dead is not lost, only transformed. I loved my brother; I continue to love him; that love goes nowhere. It becomes prayer for him, memory of him, a continued relationship with him that is different from what it was but not nothing. The dead are not absent from us in the way that the living who have gone far away are absent. They are present differently.
I will write more when I feel steadier. For now, thank you for your kindness.
Braulio
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.