Along the spectrum of losses, from the door keys to the love of one’s life , none is more unimaginable, more incomprehensible in its unnatural violation of being and time, than a parent’s loss of a child. Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899–July 2, 1961) was in his twenties and living in France when he befriend Gerald and Sara Murphy. The couple eventually returned to America when one of their sons fell ill, but it was their other son, Baoth, who died after a savage struggle with meningitis. Upon receiving the news, the thirty-five-year-old writer sent his friends an extraordinary letter, part consolation for and part consecration of a loss for which there is no salve, found in Shaun Usher’s moving compilation Letters of Note: Grief ( public library ). Ernest Hemingway On March 19, 1935, Hemingway writes: Dear Sara and Dear Gerald: You know there is nothing we can ever say or write… Yesterday I tried to write you and I couldn’t.…