“I am trying to see through it the deep meaning and lesson of this death,” he wrote. “God help me to use the heavy lesson for the good of those of us who remain.” Despite his belief in the goodness of God, however, Garfield knew that death was cruel, unpredictable, and, too often, unpreventable. Perhaps even harder to accept was that the science he so deeply admired, for all its awe-inspiring potential, seemed powerless in the face of it. Searching for a way to teach his children this hard truth, to prepare them for what inevitably lay ahead, Garfield had often turned to what he knew
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