A weekend on which we traditionally mourn the dead of old wars has been made doubly poignant by the fresh toll of British and American soldiers killed in Afghanistan and at Fort Hood in Texas — men who died at the hands of killers from whom they might, justifiably, have expected to receive nothing but gratitude or fellowship.

“Nobody gets out of life alive,” Tennessee Williams said. And when they go, the dead leave behind a grief that lodges in a corner of our heart we never knew existed. Few have borne that sorrow with such dignity as Christina Schmid, the widow of Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid. His body was returned from Afghanistan to Britain this week. The 30-year-old died last Saturday when a roadside bomb he was trying to defuse exploded.

“He was a very brave man,” said his widow as the cortege bearing his coffin wound through Wootton Bassett. “There was no other man above him ... He was my best friend.” Like a landmark that, once discerned, suddenly snaps the surrounding landscape into focus, the poise of Christina Schmid has become emblematic of a nation’s mourning: the loss of young lives, the grace in grief of the bereaved and the debt that their countrymen owe brave soldiers for their sacrifice. It was telling that, at a moment of such deep personal pain, Mrs Schmid was selfless enough to voice her regret that her husband’s colleagues had had to witness his death: “My heart goes out to them.”

We each greet grief in our own way. “He is dead but I am alive,” said Mrs Schmid, “and I do not have the luxury of grieving. I am going to live my life.” Robert Frost said he could sum up in three words everything he’d learnt about life: it goes on. Mrs Schmid shows how it goes on with grace.