Words
of comfort for those who are bereaved
To listen,
to understand, to share.
To accept my sadness, and
show me that you care,
And give me the freedom to
cry out in despair.
Please don’t try to
change the way I feel,
Or take my grief away,
It is the only feeling I
have left.
What is dying? I am
standing on the sea shore. A ship
sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean. She is an object of beauty
and I stand watching her until at last she fades on the horizon, and someone at
my side says, ‘She is gone’. Gone
where? Gone from my sight that is
all. She is just as large in masts,
hull and spars as she was when I saw her, and just as able to bear her load of
living freight to its destination. The
diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her; and just at the
moment when someone at my side says ‘She is gone’, there are others who are
watching her coming, and other voices take up the glad shout, ‘There she
comes’ - and that is dying.
Lift the empty cup of life for God to fill again,
The cup of loss and loneliness, the dregs you had to
drain.
For we must suffer soon or late, it comes at last to
all,
Let your sorrow have its season, let the teardrops
fall.
Let them have their way with you, thus nature gives
release,
For the pent up feelings, bringing balm of ease and
peace.
God is love and fills the emptied vessel to the brim,
When the empty cup of life is lifted up to him.
From the Bible….
Psalm
23
Psalm 69 vs 1-3, 15-17
Isaiah 40 vs 28-31
John
14 vs 1-6
Deuteronomy 33 vs 27
Isaiah 43 vs 1-4
Gone away into the silent
land;
When you can no more hold
me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet
turning to stay.
Remember me when no more
day by day
You tell me of the future
that you planned;
Only remember me; you
understand
It will be late to counsel
then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me
for a while
And afterwards remember, do
not grieve;
For if the darkness and
corruption leave
A vintage of the thoughts
that I once had,
Better by far that you
should forget and smile
Than that you should
remember and be sad.
Christina Rossetti
Out of the morning light,
out of reach and out of sight
But never far away.
For every night and every
day
On the wings of memory,
something brings you back to me.
Some simple and familiar
thing
The times we had, the good,
the bad
The days, the years, sweet
things and sad,
A tune, a joke, a cup of
tea.
Something brings you back
to me.
Anon.