This post is written in response to Nancy Merrill’s challenge: In Memoriam

http://nadiamerrillphotography.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/a-photo-a-week-challenge-in-memoriam/

Grave of the very first Joseph E. Lillie

Death is Nothing at All

by Canon Henry Scott-Holland

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 old familiar name,
speak to me in the easy way
which you have always used to.
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.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was,
let it be spoken without effect,
without a trace of shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was;
there is 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.
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!

I so long to meet the great cloud of witnesses who long before I was born prayed that God would  save my soul!