My Tribute

Today, I pay tribute to my late Mother. There will be much more about her later. For now, suffice it to say, that her life abruptly ended three years ago during the Covid shutdown. She is a war hero, for the pandemic took her away from us. No visiting, no communications. Gone from her were the children she loved, as we were kept from the campus of her retirement home community. She lived the last five weeks of her life in solitary isolation. No end-of-life funeral tributes - no music, just chairs outside the church, with a safe number of family members -safely distanced.

Three years have passed since she left. And finally, for me, this photograph gives me a sense that she has happily embarked upon a journey to her heavenly Father's Mansion, that which our LORD prepared and told his followers: "if it were not true, I would not tell you this".

Like the ship my Mother is prepared to sail upon in this photograph, at the end of her life on this earth, she, her dear soul, became that ship. An object of grace, beauty, and strength. The ubiquitous poem that best describes my Mother's passing journey has been called many titles mostly, "Gone from My Sight," The Parable of Immortality, and On Dying.

The authors vary from Henry van Dyke to Luther Beecher. I cannot know who actually wrote it. I only know the poem is lovely and describes a great ship, used as a metaphor for a dying person, sailing gently away, and as the watchers see her size diminish into the far horizon into nothing, there are her loved ones who have passed before her, cheering her presence, as she sails into view - to the other side: Paradise.