I DO have words to say! :) May they be a comfort.

I've been checking my friend's blog so many times every day and praying for the family, and every time I want to say something, want to comfort, but I don't know what to say or maybe how to say it.

Today, however, when I read something she posted, "the life that this amazing, Godly woman has lived, and it's come down to this...numbers, temperatures, procedures, pain medicine, phone calls, tears. She is SO MUCH more than all this!" my heart started thumping!! I knew immediately something I could share!

That was exactly how I felt sitting at my dad's side those last days before he passed away. This person who had blessed us with his wisdom, wit, teaching, singing... This mind and these hands that had incredibly produced music on every instrument he had picked up (except the flute!)... On and on. How could so much "person" evaporate?

Then someone gave me a poem that changed my perspective and really comforted me. It comforted me again when my mom passed away. So I posted it in her comments hoping that they will gain perspective and, in that perspective, find some comfort too.

Parable of Immortality
by Henry Van Dyke (1852 - 1933)

I am standing by the 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 stand and watch
until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sun and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, “There she goes!”

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 places of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
“There she goes!”
there are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
“Here she comes!"