My Dad's Eulogy: He's Just Gone From My Sight, That's All.

PHOTO: My big bro, me, my dad, my mom, baby sis and Ginny Saville's attorney. It he were alive, last Wednesday would have been my father's 84th birthday. When he died in 1988, a friend gave this poem to me. It gave me a great deal of comfort then, it still does today, as it has many friends. It is often read as part of the eulogy. I know he's around somewhere, hanging out with Granny Boo and Sandford...

Gone From My Sight

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 and I watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. then someone at my side says "There! She's 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 just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her; and just at the moment when someone at my side says,"There! She's gone," there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout "There she comes!" Although it is often credited to "Anonymous," I have found reference to it having been written by Henry Van Dyke, a 19th Century clergyman, educator, poet, and religious writer. Who knows?