"You'll live many days yet," the doctor would answer, "and months and years too.""Months and years!" he would exclaim."Why reckon the days? One day is enough for a man to know all happiness.My dear ones, why do we quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each other? Let's go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate, and kiss each other, and glorify life.""Your son cannot last long," the doctor told my mother, as she accompanied him the door."The disease is affecting his brain."The windows of his room looked out into the garden, and our garden was a shady one, with old trees in it which were coming into bud.
The first birds of spring were flitting in the branches, chirruping and singing at the windows.And looking at them and admiring them, he began suddenly begging their forgiveness too: "Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me, for I have sinned against you too." None of us could understand that at the time, but he shed tears of joy."Yes,"he said, "there was such a glory of God all about me: birds, trees, meadows, sky; only I lived in shame and dishonoured it all and did not notice the beauty and glory.""You take too many sins on yourself," mother used to say, weeping.
"Mother, darling, it's for joy, not for grief I am crying.
Though I can't explain it to you, I like to humble myself before them, for I don't know how to love them enough.If I have sinned against everyone, yet all forgive me, too, and that's heaven.Am I not in heaven now?"And there was a great deal more I don't remember.I remember Iwent once into his room when there was no one else there.It was a bright evening, the sun was setting, and the whole room was lighted up.He beckoned me, and I went up to him.He put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face tenderly, lovingly; he said nothing for a minute, only looked at me like that.
"Well," he said, "run and play now, enjoy life for me too."I went out then and ran to play.And many times in my life afterwards I remembered even with tears how he told me to enjoy life for him too.There were many other marvellous and beautiful sayings of his, though we did not understand them at the time.He died the third week after Easter.He was fully conscious though he could not talk; up to his last hour he did not change.He looked happy, his eyes beamed and sought us, he smiled at us, beckoned us.There was a great deal of talk even in the town about his death.I was impressed by all this at the time, but not too much so, though I cried a good deal at his funeral.I was young then, a child, but a lasting impression, a hidden feeling of it all, remained in my heart, ready to rise up and respond when the time came.So indeed it happened.
(b) Of the Holy Scriptures in the Life of Father Zossima.
I was left alone with my mother.Her friends began advising her to send me to Petersburg as other parents did."You have only one son now," they said, "and have a fair income, and you will be depriving him perhaps of a brilliant career if you keep him here." They suggested I should be sent to Petersburg to the Cadet Corps, that Imight afterwards enter the Imperial Guard.My mother hesitated for a long time, it was awful to part with her only child, but she made up her mind to it at last, though not without many tears, believing she was acting for my happiness.She brought me to Petersburg and put me into the Cadet Corps, and I never saw her again.For she too died three years afterwards.She spent those three years mourning and grieving for both of us.
From the house of my childhood I have brought nothing but precious memories, for there are no memories more precious than those of early childhood in one's first home.And that is almost always so if there is any love and harmony in the family at all.Indeed, precious memories may remain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to find what is precious.With my memories of home I count, too, my memories of the Bible, which, child as I was, I was very eager to read at home.I had a book of Scripture history then with excellent pictures, called A Hundred and Four Stories from the Old and New Testament, and I learned to read from it.I have it lying on my shelf now; I keep it as a precious relic of the past.But even before I learned to read, I remember first being moved to devotional feeling at eight years old.My mother took me alone to mass (I don't remember where my brother was at the time) on the Monday before Easter.It was a fine day, and I remember to-day, as though I saw it now, how the incense rose from the censer and softly floated upwards and, overhead in the cupola, mingled in rising waves with the sunlight that streamed in at the little window.I was stirred by the sight, and for the first time in my life I consciously received the seed of God's word in my heart.A youth came out into the middle of the church carrying a big book, so large that at the time I fancied he could scarcely carry it.He laid it on the reading desk, opened it, and began reading, and suddenly for the first time I understood something read in the church of God.In the land of Uz, there lived a man, righteous and God-fearing, and he had great wealth, so many camels, so many sheep and asses, and his children feasted, and he loved them very much and prayed for them."It may be that my sons have sinned in their feasting." Now the devil came before the Lord together with the sons of God, and said to the Lord that he had gone up and down the earth and under the earth."And hast thou considered my servant Job?" God asked of him.And God boasted to the devil, pointing to His great and holy servant.And the devil laughed at God's words.
