A close friend of mine lost a loved one this week. You can be floating along in life, worrying about traffic, wondering if you’ll ever achieve anything, complaining you have nothing to wear, criticizing people and wishing the day would end, but all of that just means nothing when reality hits you and you realize you’ve lost someone you can’t live without. The room begins to spin and you can’t seem to contain emotion that you’ve trained yourself so well to hide.

Time becomes heavy and all you can do is wait for it to pass. It never gets easy. People say, I’m so sorry for your loss. They send cards and flowers and their condolences. Some of it helps, but it doesn’t take the pain away. Not completely anyway. I guess it’s just a part of life and like all other things, we must deal with it. We must deal with it.

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.
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 affect,
without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolutely 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.

by Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918)
Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral