Some of you know that Dad fell several weeks ago and fractured the L2 vertebra. After a short stay at Methodist Hospital, followed by a longer stay at The Hampton, today we moved him to the Houston Hospice. He turned 91 last Monday and made an attempt at recovery through physical therapy, but it was just too much. We don't know how many days or hours he has left, but he is in the best place possible to smooth the transition from this world to the next.
There is a writing in the hospice information that is very fitting for our Dad, given his love of sailing years ago. As a teenager, I spent many hours with him at Seabrook Shipyard - working on the Neried, his first sailboat, and learning to sail in Galveston Bay.
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning 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 spec of white cloud just where the sea and 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 and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side has said: "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. ~ Henry Van Dyke
There is a writing in the hospice information that is very fitting for our Dad, given his love of sailing years ago. As a teenager, I spent many hours with him at Seabrook Shipyard - working on the Neried, his first sailboat, and learning to sail in Galveston Bay.
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning 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 spec of white cloud just where the sea and 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 and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side has said: "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. ~ Henry Van Dyke
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