Parable of Immortality

[teramis]

Checking through my friends list here, I discovered that one friend was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago, and passed away a month before I went into the hospital myself last November. I really enjoyed communicating with her, and feel out of synch with things, finding out that someone I thought was alive, is not. Someone posted this in her journal, and I thought it very appropriate, also for anyone who is facing their own mortality challenges:

Parable of Immortality

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,
and I stand and watch until at last she hangs
like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says,
" There she goes! "
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 just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment
when someone at my side says,
" There she goes! "
there are other eyes watching her coming . . .
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout . . .
" Here she comes! "

Author: Henry Van Dyke