Sizing up Death.

If I be the first of us to die,
Let grief not blacken long your sky.
Be bold yet modest in your grieving.
There is a change but not a leaving.
For just as death is part of life,
The dead live on forever in the living.
And all the gathered riches of our journey,
The moments shared, the mysteries explored,
The steady layering of intimacy stored,
The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,
The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,
The wordless language of look and touch,
The knowing,
Each giving and each taking,
These are not flowers that fade,
Nor trees that fall and crumble,
Nor are they stone,
For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand
And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.
What we were, we are.
What we had, we have.
A conjoined past imperishably present.
So when you walk the wood where once we walked together
And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,
Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,
And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,
And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,
Be still.
Close your eyes.
Breathe.
Listen for my footfall in your heart.
I am not gone but merely walk within you.
-Nicholas Evans, from "The Smoke Jumper" copyright Nicholas Evans, 2001

Today I said Good-Bye to Hella Heizmann.
Her girls, Melanie and Viola, were so strong and poised and graceful and generous with their grief, I know Hella would have been proud of them. They even sang 2 duets at Hella's request. And they did beautifully.
Hella had also requested that I sing a song that meant a lot to her, "Ich Brech Noch Einmal Auf" from my CD Welt von 1000 Wegen. I was honored but scared that I would break down crying when I stood up to sing making a spectacle of myself. It was such an emotional day. So many tears. Melanie told the story at the beginning of the service about how Hella had asked her girls to sing for her funeral and they were afraid that they wouldn't be able to do it. And Hella's response was, "You can do it, my treasures, you can do it". And they did. So, when I stood up to sing I heard Hella saying to me matter-of-factly, "You can do it, Cae, you can do it". And I did.
As I stood at the graveside, a big beautiful butterfly landed on the flowers on the casket, showed off its' colors for a moment, then flew away to greener pastures. Some day I will do that, too.