I hope you can hear the laughter

 I hope death

is like being carried to your bedroom

when you were a child

and fell asleep on the couch

during a family party.

I hope you can hear the laughter

from the next room.

~~~~~

Please leave a comment if you know who wrote this. The earliest post I found was in 2022, but with no attribution.

In memory of Betty and Iola and Dorris

Psalm 102:18

Let this be written

for a future generation . . .

Alex Haley is often quoted as having said that when an old person dies, it is like a small library burning. 

The difference is, most libraries only have books for which there are duplicates in many other libraries. 


But when an old person dies, it is a tragic loss of the many and varied pages and chapters of the assorted books of that person's unique life . . . it is left to us, the living, to remember and record and memorialize their stories . . .

Remembering and honoring
the varied lives of . . .

BETTY NALLS
my neighbor and friend
21 January 1928 ~ 17 January 2018

IOLA AVRETT
my 1st cousin once removed
11 February 1921 ~ 20 January 2018

DORRIS HENRY
mother of my 2nd cousins
19 January 1926 ~ 20 January 2018

Let them not vanish

like ghosts of forgotten memories . . . 

When we meet again

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!

Henry Scott Holland

27 January 1847 ~ 17 March 1918

Quoting W. Somerset Maugham

Quoting W. Somerset Maugham from Razor's Edge [which I am watching at this moment] . . . 

This is the young man of whom I write. He is not famous. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end, he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on this earth than a stone, thrown into a river, leaves on the surface of the water. Yet it may be that the way of life he has chosen for himself may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow man so that, long after his death perhaps, it will be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature. 

Fear in a Handful of Dust

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T.S. Eliot
That was what Dr. Adit Gadh said in response to Brennan’s inquiry about how no one missed the victim after she died . . . he continued with . . .



"We don't actually fear death;
we fear that no one will notice our absence."
Bones, Season 6, Episode 9

I bequeath myselt to the dirt

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) closes his Song of Myself (1881) as follows . . .

I bequeath myself 
to the dirt 
to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again 
look for me under your bootsoles.
You will hardly know 
who I am 
or what I mean,
But I shall be 
good health to you 
nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first 
keep encouraged,
Missing me one place 
search another,
I stop some where 
waiting for you.

Morning Twilight

It is among the loveliest customs of the ancients to bury the young at morning twilight; for, as they strive to give the softest interpretation to death, so they imagined that Aurora, who loved the young, had stolen them to her embrace. The Eastern Texian (San Augustine, Tex.), Vol. 2, No. 45, Ed. 1 Saturday, March 26, 1859 

Ghosts of forgotten memories

Alex Haley is often quoted as having likened the death of an old person to the burning of a library . . . such a tragic loss of the many and varied pages and chapters of the assorted books of a unique life . . . and even more so if others have not listened to and remembered and memorialized the stories . . . then they just vanish . . . like ghosts of forgotten memories . . .

Remembering . . . Alexander Palmer Haley . . . born 11th August 1921 in Ithaca, New York . . . died 10th February 1992 in Seattle, Washington . . .

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Born 25th May 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts
Died 27th April 1882 in Concord Massachusetts



The love that is in me, the justice, the truth can never die & that is all of me that will not die. All the rest of me is so much death— my ignorance, my vice, my corporeal pleasure. But I am nothing else than a capacity for justice, truth, love, freedom, power. I can inhale, imbibe them forevermore. They shall be so much to me that I am nothing, they all. Then shall God be all in all. Herein is my Immortality. (October 24, 1836)



I said when I awoke, After some more sleepings & wakings I shall lie on this mattress sick; then dead; and through my glad entry they will carry these bones. Where shall I be then? I lift my head and beheld the spotless orange light of the morning beaming up from the dark hills into the wide Universe. (October 21, 1837)



The event of death is always astounding; our philosophy never reaches, never possesses it; we are always at the beginning of our catechism; alwasys the definition is yet to be made, What is Death? I see nothing to help beyond observing what the mind's habit is in regard to that crisis. Simply, I have nothing to do with it. It is nothing to me. After I have made my will & set my house in order, I shall do in the immediate expectation of death the same things I should do without it. (October 28, 1837)



Life & Death are apparitions. Last night the Teachers' Sunday School met here & the theme was Judgment. I affirmed that we were Spirits now incarnated & should always be Spirits incarnated. Our thought is the income of God. I taste therefore of eternity & pronounce of eternal law Now & not hereafter. Space & time are but forms of thought. I proceed from God now & ever shall so proceed. Death is but an appearance. Yes & life's circumstances are but an appearance through which the firm virtue of this God-law penetrates & which it moulds. The inertia of matter & of fortune & of our employment is the feebleness of our spirit. (May 14, 1838)



— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Journals

The reunion of tomorrow

Mark Twain quotations on death . . .

• Death is the starlit strip
  between the companionship of yesterday
  and the reunion of tomorrow.

  
  . . . on a monument erected to Mark Twain & Ossip Gabrilowitsch

  
  
• It has been reported that I was seriously ill --
  it was another man;
  dying -- it was another man;
  dead -- the other man again . . .
  As far as I can see,
  nothing remains to be reported,
  except that I have become a foreigner.
  When you hear it, don't you believe it.
  And don't take the trouble to deny it.
  Merely just raise the American flag
  on our house in Hartford
  and let it talk.

  
  . . . Letter to Frank E. Bliss, 11/4/1897

  
  

Remembering our cousin . . .
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
30 November 1835 ~ 21 April 1910

The Shades of Evening

". . . Thus was his fair dawn of life, whilst his cloudless sun was nearing its meridian, in a moment veiled in the shades of death. . . . As the stars of heaven shine brighter at the close of day when the shades of evening gather over the earth, even so do his virtues beam with brighter lustre from the darkness of the silent tomb: and long shall it be ere there shall cease to be found in memory's waste, a green spot watered by the tears of affection for him who is gone."

Centennial History of Harrison, Maine: Containing the Centennial Celebration of 1905, and Historical and Biographical Matter :: By Alphonso Moulton, Howard L. Sampson, Granville Fernald :: Published by the authority of the town, 1909 :: Original from Harvard University :: Digitized Aug 21, 2006 :: 727 pages