Coping

Death

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 still are.
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.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was,
let it be spoken without effort,
without the trace of a 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 round the corner.

- Henry Scott Holland

An old friend sent me this, saying it helped her through a difficult time. The more I read it, the more sense it makes to me.. That thing about life being the same as it ever was, an "unbroken continuity" -- am realizing how true that is. Think I was almost resentful about it initially. But how can you resent an inescapable truth? Life continues as it always did. Only I have changed in an imperceptable way.