Condolences

November, 1864:
President Abraham Lincoln pens a letter to Lydia Parker Bixby, a widow who lost five sons in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, 21st November, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln.

October, 2017:
President Donald Trump phones Myeshia Johnson, the grieving widow of Sgt. La David Johnson who was just slain in Niger.

“He knew what he signed up for.”

As condolences go, Trump’s economy of words is hard to beat. But I have to ask Trump, whatever happened to a simple and sincere “I’m very sorry for your loss”?