Thread:Pamster315/@comment-26443914-20150826232548

My mother in law passed away from Stage 4 lung cancer in 1999. Hubby and I took care of her and since I worked from home, we spent a lot of time talking. Soon after she passed I was given this poem which has stayed with me all these years. In the months before she passed, she used to talk a lot about Aunt Babe, a relative she was very close to. Aunt Babe had passed away years and years before, I never met her. I could see my mother in law on the deck of the ship, waving to Aunt Babe.

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side, spreads her white sails to the moving 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, 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 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!"  