Funerals

I walk within you

If I be the first of us to die,

Let grief not blacken long your sky.

Be bold yet modest in your grieving.

There is change but not a leaving.

For just as death is part of life,

The dead live on forever in the living.

For all the gathered riches of our journey,

The moments shared, the mysteries explored,

The steady layer of intimacy stored.

The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,

The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,

The wordless language of look and touch,

The knowing, each giving and each taking,

These are not flowers that fade,

Nor trees that fall and crumble.

Nor are they stone,

For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand

And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.

What we were, we are.

What we had, we have.

A conjoined past imperishably present.

So when you walk the woods where once we walked together

And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,

Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,

And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,

And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,

Be still.

Clear your eyes.

Breathe.

Listen for my footfall in your heart.

I am not gone but merely walk within you.

Nicholas Evans

An excerpt from ‘The Smoke Jumper’