A friend of mine sent me this a couple of weeks ago and I love it (just wish I'd written it!).


Death is nothing at all.  It does not count.  I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened.  Everything remains exactly as it was.  I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.  Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.  Call me by the old familiar name.  Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.  Put no difference into your tone.  Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.  Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.  Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.  Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.  Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.  Life means all that it ever meant.  It is the same as it ever was.  There is absolute and unbroken continuity.  What is this death but a negligible accident?  Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?  I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner.  All is well.


Written by Henry Scott Holland (27 January 1847 - 17 March 1918) who was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford

It is with great sadness that my brother, Bill and I, must tell you that our younger brother, Larry, died in Baton Rouge, LA on July 2nd at approximately 3am.  He had suffered with COPD and asthma for many years.  Bill and Mariel helped him move to a nursing home there at the end of May.  Please pray for him.