A great poem…
I haven’t cried about Susan’s death in public in what seems like an eternity. Perhaps I haven’t cried in front of others since I came back to work last Thursday. Every time I get a sympathy card, I choke up. However, I’ve been really good at holding back in public until I get home and I’m all by myself and left to my own thoughts. Today I totally lost it. I got several cards from my organization’s loving Board members, who have had to deal with death among friends and family because of the cruel nature of pulmonary hypertension. One of the cards I received had the most beautiful message that really made me melt-down:
Life is Eternal
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads
her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the ocean blue.
She is an object of beauty and strength
and I stand and watch her
until at length she hangs
like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky
come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says,
"There! She’s gone."
Gone Where?
Gone from my sight — that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull
and spar as she was when she left my side,
and just as able to bear her load
of living freight to the place of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her;
and just at the moment when someone
at my side says, "There! She’s gone,"
there are other voices ready to take up
the glad shout, " There she comes!"
