Words To Help

Nobody trips over mountains.

It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble.

pass all the pebbles in your path and

you will find you have crossed the mountain.

--Unknown

Death Is Nothing At All

Death is nothing at all;

I have only slipped away into

the next room.

Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call

me by my old familiar name, wear no forced air of

solemnity or sorrow; life means all that it ever meant.

Why should I be out of mind only because I am out of

sight? I am waiting for you for an interval, somewhere

very near, just around the corner.

All is well.

Source unknown

My life is light, waiting for the death wind,

Like a feather on the back of my hand.

- - T. S. Eliot

Because I could not stop for Death -

He kindly stopped for me -

The carriage held just Ourselves -

And Immortality.

- - Emily Dickinson "Poem 712"

Before the beginning of years

There came to the making of man

Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;

Pleasure, with pain for leaven;

Summer, with flowers that fell;

Remembrance, fallen from heaven,

And madness risen from hell;

Strength without hands to smite;

Love that endures for a breath;

Night, the shadow of light,

And Life, the shadow of death.

- - Algernon Charles Swinburne

"Atalanta in Calydon" (1865)

Better to die, and sleep

The never-waking sleep, than linger on

And dare to live when the soul's life is gone.

- - Sophocles "Ajax" (circa 409 B.C.)

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

- - T. S. Eliot "The Hollow Men"

When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me:

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree.

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet:

And if thou wilt, remember

And if thou wilt, forget.

- - Christina Rossetti "Song"

If Only...

O that 'twere possible

After long grief and pain

To find the arms of my true love

Round me once again!...

A shadow flits before me,

Not thou, but like to thee:

Ah Christ, that it were possible

For one short hour to see

The souls we loved, that they might tell us

What and where they be!

--Alfred , Lord Tennyson

A Million Times...

A million times we've thought of you

A million times we've cried.

If love alone could have saved you,

You never would have died.

In life we loved you dearly,

In death we love you still.

In our hearts you hold a place

No one could ever fill.

It broke our hearts to lose you

But you didn't go alone,

For part of us went with you

The day God took you home.