I was at home this past weekend for my mother’s memorial service – 400 plus people at the church and the reception following, a most fitting tribute to a most wonderful woman. Family and friends came from all over. It was an extremely emotional weekend and I am completely and utterly spent. But now the healing can truly begin, I hope.
My father, sister and I all spoke at the service. I had originally intended to read what I had at her funeral the month before – a collection of memories of my mother. But the night before an old friend of hers dropped off a photograph and a poem, which I found quite inspiring. I brought both with me to the church and not until I was standing in front of all those people did I decide which to read. And it was the right choice:
Death is Nothing at All
by Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918) Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
that we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference in your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we 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 affect,
without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolutely unbroken continuity.
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.
Finn's Space 