For Marti

Earlier today, my dear friend Deb lost her mother to cancer.  Although I never met Marti, I know she was a wonderful woman from the cards and emails we exchanged - not to mention the extraordinary daughter she raised and granddaughter, Carrie, she influenced.  I was touched beyond words when Marti, then already in pain and reaching the end of her life, took time to send me a long note offering comfort after Paul was diagnosed with cancer.  Marti, you will be missed. This one's for you:

Gone from Sight 

by Henry Van Dyke

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. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!”
“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 she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. 

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