Death is nothing at all

Death is nothing at all

I have only slipped away into the next room

I am I and you are you

Whatever we were to each other

That we are still

Call me by my own familiar name

Speak to me in the easy way you always used

Put no difference into your tone

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

Laugh as we always laughed

At the little jokes we always enjoyed together

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was

Let it be spoken without effort

Without the ghost of a shadow in it

Life means all that it ever was

There is absolute unbroken continuity

What is death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind

Because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you for an interval

Somewhere very near

Just around the corner

All is well.

Nothing is past; nothing is lost

One brief moment and all will be as it was before

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Canon Henry Scott-Holland, Canon of St Paul's Cathedral (1847 - 1918)

Death has been much on my mind and I am sure on many of your minds too as we hear of the shooting in Connecticut. I have been praying often for the families whose arms ache to hold their loved ones, whose homes are empty because  their child isn't there. Yesterday a young man told me about the funeral he had attended last week, for his uncle. He spoke of his own sadness for his dad (it was his brother) and how he hadn't wanted to speak about his uncle in case it made his dad sad. He then told me many things he remembered about him, especially things which had made him laugh. He smiled as he told me, his eyes bright with tears. In his description I almost could imagine this man, loved by his family and friends. We chatted about how good it is to talk about the person. This poem reminds me how I felt after my parents died (9 months apart) that they were just a breath away, just around the corner as the poem describes. I felt that heaven was just through a curtain and they would be there. Death is always sad, even more so when it is your child but how wonderful is it to believe that we shall see them again in heaven.  

‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Rev 21v4