A Parable of Immortality

"I am standing upon that foreshore.

 

"A ship at my side spreads her white sails in the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.

 

"She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and 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's all.

 

"She is just as large in mast and spar and hull as ever she was when she left my side; just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination.

 

"Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

 

"And just at that 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, 'Here she comes!'"

 

It will be two years ago tonight that my son Drew died. In the intervening time between then and now, as I have struggled to understand his passing and accept his absence, I have tried to remember that my perspective only allows me to witness his story from the shoreline now void of the great ship.

 

Full understanding and acceptance will not come until I am able to also witness his story from the opposite shoreline...the one traveled to rather than away from.

 

You could say that I have been trying to solve a complex mathematical problem when I only had the information for one side of the equation. Thus, the equation did not balance or equate properly due to the pieces which were hidden from my perspective.

 

Eventually I must come to embrace the truth that the equation won't balance (nor my understanding of Drew's death be complete) until I am able to see both sides of it.

 

I love and miss you son.

 

Source: "A Parable of Immortality"

by Henry Van Dyke