Death is nothing at all

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 shared together.
Let my name ever be
the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect, 
without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all
that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is 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
1847 -1918

The past is beautiful

because one never realizes an emotion at the time.

It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present,

only about the past.

Virginia Woolf