Not to Grieve for the Departed

In the spring of 1912 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá stayed at the Washington home of Agnes Parsons. She recorded in her diary:

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On our way back to the carriage I said I feared I had made my mother [Elizabeth Royal, who had lived with the Parsons Family in Washington, D.C.] unhappy by trying to keep my thoughts from her, after she had passed away — I felt then that unless I did this, as she had had such an overwhelming affection for me while she was here, that the constant thinking on my part might hold her here and this I wanted to avoid.

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‘Abdu’l-Bahá said I had done right not to sorrow — that the spirit of another rejoices in the joy of the loved one — that it is wrong to allow ourselves to grieve for those who have passed away. “If friends go to live in another city, they do not like to hear that their friends are lamenting.”

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