I felt a prompting to post this to my blog upon reading an interview that Monkee Mike Nesmith gave in the wake of the death of Davy Jones. He said that he wasn't going to give up his former bandmate to mortality just yet, that Davy was still around. I wish there was a way I could send this to him. This poem by Henry Scott Holland was read at my mother's memorial service a little over two years ago by my niece, Isabella.
Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into 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 in your tone,
wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Pray, 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 as ever was; there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner.
All is well.
~Henry Scott Holland
Slan go foill...
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