From the interesting new blog Letters of Note, ‘an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and even emails’: this letter from Winston Churchill to his wife. It was written during the First World War (in July 1915) and was to be sent in the event of his death.
Do not grieve for me too much. I am a spirit confident of my rights. Death is only an incident & not the most important which happens to us in this state of being. On the whole, especially since I met you my darling I have been happy, & you have taught me how noble a woman’s heart can be. If there is anywhere else I shall be on the look out for you. Meanwhile look forward, feel free, rejoice in life, cherish the children, guard my memory. God bless you.
Good bye.
W.
It made me think of In Event of Moon Disaster, a memo prepared (by then presidential speechwriter William Safire) as Apollo 11 traveled to the moon to deliver Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to its unknown surface. In Event of Moon Disaster detailed what was to be done should it prove impossible to retrieve the two men.
Principally it contains the text of a speech to be delivered by Richard Nixon on the loss.
It is now a peculiar tragedy to imagine – incredible challenges overcome just to litter a strange new landscape with two silver-foiled bodies.
But it’s that phrase ‘widows-to-be’ in the official rubric that suggests the tension between the proud, mournful tone and the difficult (almost) reality. Communications are to be cut off, America preferring the ceremony of commending Armstrong and Aldrin’s souls to ‘the deepest of the deep’ to having to listen to the men find their impossibly sad deaths – by lack of air or food, or by their own hands, on the surface of an empty world.