Joan from her grandchildren
I am standing on a 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 and I watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky mingle with each other. Then, someone at my side says, "There,she is gone."
"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 is gone", there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Ah, here she comes". And this is dying.
We seem to give her back to you,dear God, who gave her first to us. Yet, as you did not lose her in giving, so we have not lost her by her return. Love is eternal, life is immortal and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
Love, Gregory, Bethany and Jeremy
Posted by Sharon Scarbrough Merrill
Monday March 4, 2013 at 9:05 pm