All Is Well

Grieving is hard and funerals are harder, so I hope you'll accept that writing today is a little too hard and accept a poem I first heard when a friend's father died many years ago. I thought it beautiful then and now? Well, now it has new meaning for me.

All Is Well

Death is nothing at all, 

I have only slipped 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 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 effect, without the trace of shadow on it. 

Life means all that it ever meant. 

It it 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. 

Henry Scott Holland