Just Around the Corner

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Yesterday was my mother's birthday. Momma would have been 89 years old yesterday. I had been thinking about her all day, and at one point was feeling very melancholy that I couldn't share something with her that I had found. How I wished she could be just around a corner waiting for me, or simply at the end of the phone ready to chat.

As I thought this, I unconsciously picked up my phone to check my Facebook page. This isn't something I do regularly, because I try not to be a slave to social media, so the serendipity of what happened next was not wasted on me. 

The post at the top of my page was from the mother of a close childhood friend. She had posted the essay below, written by Rev. Henry Scott-Holland as part of a sermon he gave in 1910 after the death of King Edward VII. 

Death Is Nothing at All by Henry Scott-Holland

 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. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again! 

My day turned around, the melancholy dissipating in the serendipity of the moment.  You see, Momma read me this on multiple occasions. I have, over the years, looked for the essay, but have never been able to find the complete work, only snippets of it. Nor, had I known who had written it or why. 

I honestly believe that this one essay is the reason why I view death the way I do. I am sad, but I have never felt that all was lost. I also never stop talking to my friends and family who have died. I truly feel them with me. In addition, I have received numerous signs and messages from them when I needed them most - like the sudden appearance of Rev. Scott-Holland's essay on my Facebook page.

Momma seems to have been with me all along, guiding me to find a reminder of how death is nothing at all!

Blessings!

 Further reading: 

 Complete Sermon - The King of Terrors by Rev. Scott-Holland

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