Between 1869 and 1918, President Joseph F. Smith experienced
the heartache and sorrow associated with the death of family members. He buried
thirteen children, nine of whom died in childhood, and one wife. President
Smith wrote the following in a letter to his wife Edna when his firstborn
child, Mercy Josephine, died when she was not quite three years old.
“I scarcely dare to trust myself to write, even now my heart
aches, and my mind is all chaos if I should murmur, may God forgive me, my soul
has been and is tried with poignant grief, my heart is bruised and wrenched
almost asunder. I am desolate, my home seems desolate and almost dreary, yet
here are my family and my little babe yet I cannot help but feel that the
tenderest, sweetest and yet the strongest cord that bound me to home and earth
is severed, my babe, my own sweet Dodo is gone! I can scarcely believe it and
my heart asks, can it be? I look in vain, I listen, no sound, I wander through
the rooms, all are vacant, lonely, desolate, deserted. I look down the garden
walk, peer around the house, look here and there for a glimpse of a little
golden, sunny head and rosy cheeks, but no, alas, no pattering little
footsteps. No beaming little black eyes sparkling with love for papa no sweet
little enquiring voice asking a thousand questions, and telling pretty little
things, prattling merrily, no soft little dimpled hands clasping me around the
neck, no sweet rosy lips returning in childish innocence my fond embrace and
kisses, but a vacant little chair. Her little toys concealed, her clothes put
by, and only the one desolate thought forcing its crushing leaden weight upon
my heart--she is not here, she is gone! But will she not come back? She cannot
leave me long, where is she? I am almost wild, and O God only knows how much I
loved my girl, and she the light and the joy of my heart.
“The morning before she died, after being up with her all
night, for I watched her every night, I said to her, ‘My little pet did not
sleep all night.’ She shook her head and replied, ‘I’ll sleep today, papa.’ Oh!
how those little words shot through my heart. I knew though I would not
believe, it was another voice, that it meant the sleep of death and she did
sleep. And, Oh! the light of my heart went out. The image of heaven graven in
my soul was almost departed” (in Joseph Fielding Smith, Life of Joseph F. Smith
1938, 455-56).
