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 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 around the corner.
All is well.
-Henry Scott Holland
*I happened to find this poem in a box of family photos, birth, and death certificates. It was originally printed in a newspaper next to a photo of "The Wall" of missing persons flyers posted on the wall around Ground Zero (to protect the public from building wreckage) weeks after 9/11.
It was also used at my beloved grandmother's funeral reception.
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