By Henry Van Dyke

I am standing on the seashore.

Suddenly, a ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze, and starts out for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength, 
  and I stand and watch her until she disappears 
  into the horizon where the ocean and sky meet.

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 
  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 voices ready to gladly shout,
  
‘There! She comes!’

And that is dying.

By Dominican Priest Bede Jarrett (1881 – 1934)    

We give him/her back to you, O Lord
who first give him/her to us;

as you did not lose him/her in the giving, so we do not lose him/her in the return.

Not as the world gives do you give,
O Lover of souls.


For what is yours is also ours, if we belong to you.

Life is unending because love is undying,
 and the boundaries of this life are but a horizon,


and a horizon is but the limit of our vision.

Life us up, strong Son of God, that we may see further. 

Strengthen our faith that we may see beyond the horizon.

And while you prepare a place for us, 


as you have promised, prepare us also for that happy place;

that where you are, we may also be,


with those we have loved, forever

Amen