For friends

There is much to catch up on after my business trip/holiday and I am aware that two readers, dear friends of mine have suffered the loss of a loved one while I have been away. It’s always hard to know what to say at such times because the sense of loss can be so profound and over-powering. In part that loss becomes so painfully overwhelming because of the enormous sense of ‘finality.’ All one can do at such times is to remind one’s friends that the ‘finality’ of death is simply an illusion, that your loved ones will always live on in your hearts and that the joy and love they brought to your lives will always be safe and secure there.

My grandmother left me this quotation when she died. I hope whatever your God or vision of the Universe it helps bring you the solace it brought me.

‘Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that 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 an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.

One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!’

Henry Scott Holland