The Bell

Barry Fraser over at An Explorer's View of Life has cancer.  The members of Theme Thursday are helping him mark a milestone this week.  Regular readers of my blog know about my bout with cancer, my undergoing chemo since October and the radiation and stem cell transplant yet to come.  You can catch up on my ordeal my clicking on the cancer2 label at the bottom of this post.  But Barry is doing his last scheduled chemo treatment this afternoon and when he's done he's going to ring this:

Go to Barry's blog and see what that's all about.

Good luck Barry, and to all those undergoing cancer treatment.  Cancer is an insidious disease and we've got to find a cure.

For a close family member and even closer friend that cure couldn't come soon enough.  She slipped from us earlier this week.  So here's my bell, a last bell if you would, for her...and for her partner and best friend.

A Consoling Poem About Death: Death Is Nothing At All

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to 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 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 effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
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 around the corner.

All is well.

Henry Scott Holland ~ 1847-1918
Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral ~ London. UK 

I'm trying my best to believe this.  I know she would have.