Someone I love very much goes each year to a cemetery near her home, carrying a small teddy bear. She stands beside a tiny grave, thinking about what-might-have-been, about a terrible grief only partly assuaged by the years -- remembering. Then she places the bear on the grave of a little fellow who never got to hold it and quietly returns to her car. The passage of the years, and the hope of a some-day reunion help, but the inward pain will never completely disappear 'til then.

Isn't this the world in microcosm? Don't we all have to walk through that dark valley, either in the loss of someone who means so much, or at least when we ourselves must enter that "undiscovered country"? America's papers daily feature pictures of the anguished faces of mothers and fathers, of children, or friends …