Death Is Nothing At All
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that 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 effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; 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.
– Henry Scott Holland
With the Eyes of Your Faith
Weep now,
But moderate your tears
And bless God:
For this wife (husband, mother, father, son, daughter) will be good to you,
As you must hope,
Much more where she (he) is,
Than she (he) could have been where she (he) was.
Behold her then
With the eyes of your faith,
And so. . . calm your soul.
-St. Francis de Sales
An Indian Prayer
O Great Spirit,
Whose voice I hear in the winds,
And whose breath gives life to all the world,
Hear me! I am small and weak; I need your strength and wisdom.
Let Me Walk in Beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make My Hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice.
Make Me Wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people.
Let Me Learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock.
I Seek Strength, not to be greater than my brother or sister,
but to fight my greatest enemy – myself.
Make Me Always Ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes.
So When Life Fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame.
Ithaca
When you start on your journey to Ithaca,
then pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
Do not fear the Lestrygonians
and the Cyclopes and the angry Poseidon.
You will never meet such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your body and your spirit.
You will never meet the Lestrygonians,
the Cyclopes and the fierce Poseidon,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not raise them up before you.
Then pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many,
that you will enter ports seen for the first time
with such pleasure, with such joy!
Stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and corals, amber and ebony,
and pleasurable perfumes of all kinds,
buy as many pleasurable perfumes as you can;
visit hosts of Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from those who have knowledge.
Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for long years;
and even to anchor at the isle when you are old,
rich with all that you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would never have taken the road.
But she has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not defrauded you.
With the great wisdom you have gained, with so much experience,
you must surely have understood by then what these Ithacas mean.
-Constantine Cavafy (1911)
An Irish Blessing
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face
And the rains fall soft upon your fields
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the palm of God’s hand.
The Legacy
When I die, give what is left of me to children.
If you need to cry, cry for your sisters and brothers walking beside you. Put your arms around anyone and give them what you need to give to me. I want to leave you with something, something better than words or sounds. Look for me in the people I have known and loved.
And if you cannot live without me, then let me live on in your eyes, your mind and your acts of kindness. You can love me most by letting hands touch hands and letting go of children that need to be free.
Love does not die, people do. So when all that is left of me is love . . . give me away. -John Wayne Schlatter
Letter from Fra Giovanni, 1513
I salute you.
I am your friend and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not;
But there is much, very much,
that while I cannot give it, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our heart finds rest in it today.
Take Heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.
Take peace!
The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it yet within our reach is. . . Joy!
Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering,
Cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard.
Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor,
woven of Lord, by Wisdom, with Power . . .
Life is so full of meaning and purpose,
so full of meaning beneath its covering,
that you will find that each but cloaks your heaven.
Courage then, to claim it; that is all!
But courage you have;
and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together,
wending through unknown country Home.
And so, at this time I greet you;
not quite as the world sends greetings but with profound esteem,
and with the prayer that for you, now and forever,
the Day breaks and shadows flee away.
Look to this Day
Short version:
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life. . .
For yesterday is already a dream and tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
–Ancient Sanskrit Poem
Long version:
Look to this day
for it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
the realities and truths of existence
the joy of growth, the splendor of action, the glory of power.
For yesterday is but a memory And tomorrow is only a vision.
But today well lived makes every yesterday a memory of happiness
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day….
On the death of the Beloved – Celtic Wisdom
Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or might or pain can reach you.
Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.
The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.
Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.
Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.
We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.
Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.
Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.
When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.
May you continue to inspire us:
To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.
– John O’Donohue.
Prayer of Final Commendation
Into your hands, O Lord, we humbly entrust all who have died.
In this life you embraced them with your tender love;
Deliver them now from every evil and bid them enter eternal rest.
The old order has passed away: welcome them then into paradise,
Where there will be no sorrow, no weeping nor pain,
But the fullness of peace and joy with your Son and the Holy Spirit
For ever and ever. Amen
She is Gone
You can shed tears that she is gone
Or you can smile because she has lived
You can close your eyes and pray that she will come back
Or you can open your eyes and see all that she has left
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her
Or you can be full of the love that you shared
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday
You can remember her and only that she is gone
Or you can cherish her memory and let it live on
You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back
Or you can do what she would want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on.
– David Harkins
Success
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better: whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success. -Attributed to Bessie Anderson Stanley, 1904
A Tear and a Smile
Cover not my breast with weeping and sighing,
But write upon it with your fingers
The symbol of love and the sign of joy.
Disturb not the air’s repose
With the chanting of priest and threnody,
But let your heart to exult with me
In praise of immortality and everlasting life.
Wear not the black of mourning,
But rejoice with me in white raiment.
Speak not in sorrow of my going,
But close your eyes and you shall see me among you,
Now and forevermore.
-Kahlil Gibran
You do not have to be good.
You do not have Wild Geese
to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself
to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
-Mary Oliver
When Great Trees Fall
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare , sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly.
Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be.
Be and be better.
For they existed.
– Maya Angelou
Perfection Wasted
And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic
which took a whole life to develop and market —
the quips, the witticisms, the slant adjusted to a few,
those loved ones nearest the lip of the stage,
their soft faces blanched in the foot light glow,
their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That’s it; no one.
Imitators and descendants aren’t the same.
-John Updike
With the Eyes of Your Faith
Weep now,
But moderate your tears
And bless God:
For this brother will be good to you,
As you must hope,
Much more where he is,
Than he could have been where he was.
Behold him then
With the eyes of your faith,
And so. . . calm your soul.
-St. Francis de Sales
The Hebrew Prayer Book for High Holiday
Birth is a beginning
And death a destination.
And life is a journey:
From childhood to maturity
And youth to age;
From innocence to awareness
And ignorance to knowing;
From foolishness to discretion
And then, perhaps to wisdom;
From weakness to strength
Or strength to weakness –
And, often, back again;
From offense to forgiveness,
From loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude,
From pain to compassion,
And grief to understanding –
From fear to faith;
From defeat to defeat to defeat –
Until, looking backward or ahead,
We see that victory lies
Not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey, stage by stage,
A sacred pilgrimage.
Birth is a beginning
And death a destination.
And life is a journey,
A sacred pilgrimage –
To life everlasting.