Emotional Labor of Loss

Abstract

In 1887, missionary Herman Jensen wrote a travel letter including an account of the last evening of his furlough in Denmark before returning to his mission work in India. In the letter, which was addressed to his employer, the Danish Missionary Society’s (DMS) board, he described how he, his wife Julie Jensen, and his son Viggo had parted from his nine-year-old daughter Nanna. They had visited their friend Pastor Kemp at whose house they had also met with Pastor Hansen who had come to take Nanna with him to the town of Esbjerg where she was now going to live.

We were entirely unreceptive to all the love we met in Pastor Kemp’s house that day. For my wife and I it was a very heavy day. Now the moment had come, which we had feared for years and which, already in India, had made my wife sad at the thought or mention of going home, now we were to part with our daughter. And we parted with her in Pastor Kemp’s house. When in the evening we drove away from the rectory together with Pastor Kemp and Pastor Hansen to the ship, what was almost the hardest part came to pass: to see our little boy (3½ years), crying and anxious, look back and say: ‘Mother, I want to be where Nanna is!’ When we arrived at the ship it was dark and it had started to rain.

Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.’

—Genesis 22:2

Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

—Matthew 10:37–38