Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Condolence Message -- Franklin Institute Coworker

My mother died in early January 1980.  A coworker at The Franklin Institute Research Laboratories in Philadelphia, Michelle Marchesano Dugan and her husband, Charley, sent me a Hallmark condolence card, postmarked January 22, 1980.  I worked with Mrs. Dugan from 1976 to 1979.  I attended her wedding in 1977.  Her sons Peter Dugan and Leonardo Dugan are highly-accomplished musicians.  Her father was a lawyer.  She had a younger brother.  She graduated from Tufts University.
________________________

In
Sympathy
and 
Friendship

Dear Gary,

Though very little
can be said
when sorrows touch the heart,
This brings you
all the sympathy
that friendship can impart.

Sincerely,

Charley & Michelle Dugan

Our thoughts and prayers are with you, Gary--

2 comments:

My Daily Struggles said...

"Though very little

can be said

when sorrows touch the heart,

This brings you

all the sympathy

that friendship can impart."

Perhaps the author had in mind the line from Vergil's Aeneid:

Aeneas, while crying, says, "sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt" as he gazes at one of the murals found in a Carthaginian temple, which depicts battles of the Trojan War and deaths of his friends and countrymen. Translated this says, "There are tears of things and mortal things (sufferings) touch the soul." As he stands there, Aeneas is overcome by the futility of warfare and waste of human life. The burden man has to bear, ever present frailty and suffering, is what would define the essence of human experience.

A translation by the famous classicist Robert Fagles renders the quote as: "The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart."

Robert Fitzgerald, meanwhile, translates it as: "They weep here \ For how the world goes, and our life that passes \ Touches their hearts."

My Daily Struggles said...

Michelle, get your money back from Hallmark. They ripped off Virgil!!