"GONE FROM SIGHT" BY HENRY VAN DYKE

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side, spreads her whitesails to the moving breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length, she hangs like a speck of whitecloud just where the sea and the sky come to mingle with each other. Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone." Gone where? Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast, hull and spar as she was when she left my side. And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me -- not in her. And just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone," there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!" And that is dying ... Death comes in its own time, in its own way. Death is as unique as the individual experiencing it.