And such is dying...

SUCH IS DYING

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 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's 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 just as able to bear her load of living weight to the place of destination.

Her diminished size is in me, not is her; 

and just at the moment when someone at my side says:  

"There!  She's gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming 

and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, 

"Here she comes!"

- and such is dying.

My Dad  gave this poem to me in the winter of 2010.  We were chatting after Kerry's funeral and he asked me to give this poem to her parents.  He said I should read it before I gave it to them.  I remember being deeply touched by it.  Little did I know the significance it would hold for me a few years later.

My dad was involved in a car accident on the 9th of October 2012.  He was on his way to work after dropping the children off at seminary.  It was rainy and my heroic dad, who I thought was immortal crashed into a concrete pillar going under a bridge.  He lost control of the car.  I had written to him asking for my brother's email address for his mission that very morning.  It is so hard to look at that email and know that he would never answer it.