|
In Time of Bereavement
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 we are still.
Call me by my familiar name,
speak to me in the easy way we 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 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 an effort,
without the ghost of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant;
it is the same as it ever was.
There is absolutely unbroken continuity.
What is death but a negligible accident?
I am but waiting for your for an interval,
somewhere very near, just around the corner.
by Canon Henry Scott-Holland 1847-1918
|
