The lonesomeness that filled Moroni's heart was made the more acute by the realization also that the Lamanites had killed his father, Mormon. Through all the vicissitudes of battle and preaching the Gospel, in their anxiety for the safety of each other, Mormon and Moroni had been more than father and son; they had been companions. Now that relationship was broken by Mormon's death, and Moroni was left alone to write "the sad tale of the destruction of my people." To this end and because his father had so commanded, Moroni wrote the bitter story of the extinction of this once divinely favored people.
Moroni, all his kinsfolk slain by the Lamanites, expected that he himself would, at any moment, be a victim of Lamanitish hatred; not knowing, he says, "whether they will slay me," he takes a collected retrospect of all his past life, and expresses no regrets and offers no apologies, pretexts or excuses, but enters calmly and even joyously upon the prospect of his coming doom and neither flinches nor fears it. He says, "How long the Lord will suffer that I may live I know not."