“As you can imagine,” Maria Feodorovna wrote to her mother, “the departure from Livadia was also very sad. We followed him on foot from the top of the church down to the steamer, where another prayer service was held for the population. We walked terribly slowly for 2½ hours, so everyone had a lot of pain in their legs after that ...
On board the ship, his coffin was placed in the middle of the upper deck, and the adjutant generals and adjutants kept watch, while the priests recited a prayer aloud. We arrived in Sevastopol just before sunset, so it was quite cold, there was also a memorial service...
Yesterday was our wedding day, which we will never celebrate together again, but just think, he thought about it three days before he died and chose a wonderful bracelet for me, which he gave to the valet with the words that this is a gift for me on the wedding day! Now Alix gave it to me, and—you can imagine how it touched me and at the same time plunged me into despair—it was no longer he who gave it to me! How quickly these years have flown by, and now that my happiness is gone, I must live on, without him, who was everything to me!!! I don't know how I can bear this pain and this terrible grief!
Only our Lord God can help me bear this heavy cross that He has placed on me! Just imagine my return home and arrival at the Anichkov Palace without him. I really dread everything I have yet to endure! I am grateful to you from the bottom of my heart, my angel Mama, for your blessed letter, which I received back in Livadia ...
But I, my angel Mama, am finishing this mournful, woeful letter. May the Lord hold His protecting hand over you and help us all! I kiss you with all my heart, I remain your infinitely loving and grateful, but desperate Minnie."
Maria Feodorovna on her husband's death (1894)