This Mortal Coil

Last night I learned of another passing...... a dear friend.....a man I was very close to many years ago...an artist and as mad as a cut snake....I loved him.........we did some crazy stuff together.

Every time I feel like I just come up for air another beloved passes and I feel the loss... all over again. I read this today...I felt it was appropriate.


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 there are other voices ready to take up the glad shout,

"Here she comes!"

And that is dying.

- Rev. Henry Van Dyke