Gone from my sight.

Last night, my dad died. I got the tearful call from my mother which awakened me from a sound sleep at near midnight EST. It was actually welcome relief. He stopped having real interaction and any quality time after the Thanksgiving weekend. He would have preferred to have left earlier but his body was not done living yet. When I was in Chicago with him and the family for two weeks at Thanksgiving, I read the following in the Joliet Hospice pamphlet on death.

Gone from My Sight.

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 death.

by Henry Van Dyke

I thought it was great and hopeful.