Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me;
"Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."
--This is the epitaph Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) wrote for himself. It is carved on his gravestone at Vailima in Samoa.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there.
I do not sleep
I am a thousand winds that swiftly blow.
I am the diamond glint
on newly fallen snow.
I am the sunlight
on ripened grain.
I am the soft and gentle autumn rain
When you wake from sleep in the early morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft, starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
--Attributed to Mary E. Frye (1904-2004)
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life....That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past....
--Ecclesiastes 3, The Bible
The memory of my mother stays with me
throughout the years: the way she used to stand
framed in the door when any of her band
of children left... as long as she could see
their forms, she gazed, as if she seemed to be
trying to guard-- to meet some far demand;
and then before she turned to tasks at hand,
she breathed a little prayer inaudibly.
And now, I think, in some far heavenly place,
she watches still, and yet is not distressed,
but rather as one who, after life's long race,
has found contentment in a well-earned rest,
there, in a peaceful dreamlike reverie,
she waits, from earthly cares forever free.
--Margaret Baggerly Bruner (1886-1970)
Death, be not proud, though some have callèd thee
mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:
for those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,
much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
and soonest our best men with thee do go--
rest of their bones and souls' delivery!
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
and dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
and poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
and better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
and Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!
--John Donne (1572-1831)
The Flower
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
to which, besides their own demean,
the late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
grief melts away
like snow in May,
as if there were no such cold thing.
Who would have thought my shriveled heart
could have recovered greenness? It was gone
quite under ground; as flowers depart
to see their mother-root, when they have blown;
where they together
all the hard weather,
dead to the world, keep house unknown.
These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
killing and quickning, bringing down to hell
and up to heaven in an houre;
making a chiming of a passing-bell,
we say amiss,
this or that is:
thy word is all, if we could spell.
O that I once past changing were;
fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,
offering at heaven, growing and groning thither:
nor doth my flower
want a spring-shower,
my sins and I joining together;
But while I grow to a straight line;
still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own,
thy anger comes, and I decline:
what frost to that? what pole is not the zone,
where all things burn,
when thou dost turn,
and the least frown of thine is shown?
And now in age I bud again,
after so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
and relish versing: O my only light,
it cannot be
that I am he
on whom thy tempests fell all night.
These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
to make us see we are but flowers that glide:
which when we once can finde and prove,
thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.
who would be more,
swelling through store,
forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
--George Herbert (1593-1633) wrote this poem the year he died.
But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
--Jesus, according to Matthew in the King James Bible (22:31.32)
Death alters the reality we inhabit; the death of an intimate changes it completely. No part of my life, from my most ethereal notions of God to the most mundane detail of toothbrushing, was the same after Drew died. Life consisted of one rending novelty after another....
It doesn't matter how educated, moneyed, or smart you are: when your child's footprints end at the river's edge, when the one you love has gone into the woods with a bleak outlook and a loaded gun, when the chaplain is walking toward you with bad news in her mouth, then only the clichés are true, and you will repeat them, unashamed. Your life will swing suddenly and cruelly in a new direction, and if you are really wise-- and it's surprising and wondrous how many people have this wisdom in them-- you will know enough to look around for love. It will be there, standing right on the hinge, holding out its arms. And if you are wise, you will fall against it and be held.
--From Here If You Need Me, by Kate Braestrup, whose husband Drew Griffiths (in photo) was a policeman. He died in the line of duty in 1996, leaving her a widow with four small children. She later became a minister and as a chaplain for the Maine Warden Service, helps to comfort family members when the Warden Service must search for missing people.
For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
--Psalm 30:5, King James Version of the Bible
[Christine McFadden's four children were murdered by her ex-husband in 2002. Christine recently remarried and this year she gave birth to twin girls. She talked to Oprah Winfrey about her surviving to love again.]
Melanie, Stanley, Stuart, and Michelle were the best things that ever happened to me. Even in their short lives, they exceeded any hopes I could have had for them. Yes, I know I have to go forward now. By marrying and bringing these two girls into the world, that's what I'm choosing to do....
And even now I still feel like hell is only a step away. But I choose not to step into it.
--from interview in Oprah magazine, April 2007
