Gone From My Sight

Here I am again writing something that I used for my mother and my daughter's funerals... I have been reading for as long as I remember... I often say that the miraculous thing about reading is that you live many lifetimes in one... I become if only for a little while the character's that I most identify with or would like to be like as I read... So that's why words mean so much to me and why I share them with you hoping they will help you as they help me. When someone dies its hard to let go... Like yall don't already know that... This was in a booklet given to me when my mother was dying... I reworded it some to make it more feminine... You will have the name and author so that you can find it in its original form... For myself I reworded it for 2 of the most important women in my life and I prefer to keep it this way... Gone From My Sight I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, "there she is gone!" "Gone where?" Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast, in hull, and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!" There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!" And that is dying. Author Henry Van Dyke As many of us who have lost loved female figures in our lives have lost male figures, me too... so where it says she, her etc put in its place he, him, his... This is for all of you and I hope it comforts you as it comforts me...