My wife's mom passed away at 3AM this morning....cancer... which she has been battling in one form or another for the past three years.
She spent the last few months of her life in our home, and I am happy that Kathy had the chance to care for her mother in that way. She is very brave. Kathy lost her sister to cancer in 2009...she was there for her, and what with my ordeal that same year, she has been through the wringer. When my mom died five years ago I was 1,400 miles away and not at her bedside. It's very different.
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I am standing upon 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 sea 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 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 goes! " there are other eyes watching her coming . . and other voices ready to take up the glad shout . . . " Here she comes! "
And that is dying.
---Henry Van Dyke
That is a precious and apt poem to wave "away" the earthly presence of Kathy's mother. I didn't know she'd been living with you all that time. I hope that Mishu was a comfort.... cats can be that way, also. My hugs to you both as you grieve... as you breathe....
ReplyDeleteDeath is nothing at all.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
--Henry Scott Holland
My very deepest sympathies.