“Oh, how can I stand it, pen cannot describe my feelings, the agony of my heart.”1 Eliza Shelton Keeler was almost overcome by emotion. It had only been a few months since her eldest son Shelton's sudden death in March 1887: her kind, “noble,” “brave” boy.2 He was only twenty-five years old, only just “in the full bloom of manhood.”3 Her emotions were still raw and difficult to suppress. Writing in a diary to the son she knew could not answer back, she cried out, “my heart is lonely without you, my heart throbs and pains, I cannot stop it or control my feelings . . . [your death] has come so sudden so unexpected to me, that I can hardly believe that I will never see your sweet face in this life or hear your voice.”4
This was not the first time in her forty-seven...
