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 my old familiar name, speak to 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 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 effort, without the ghost of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same that it ever was: there is absolutely unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a gateway? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near just around the corner.
All is well. Nothing is past; 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! Infinitely happier and forever we will all be one together with Christ.
By Henry Scott Holland, St Pauls Catherdral. Approx 1910.
