Leavings

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.

— Henry Van Dyke

The call came.

The vigil has ended.

She has gone on ahead to what most of us can only imagine.

And she is happy.

There are not many words that I can squeeze out around the lump in my throat...so I will need to borrow from the words of others until I can find my own.

Grandma

July 8, 1916 - March 8, 2012

...I write these words to name myself - to name each of us -

worthy of going home, worthy of having our longing met,

worthy of awakening in the arms of the Beloved.

~Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Dance