Death is Only a Door
My friends are now at that age where their parents are passing over to the next world, and two people I love and respect have lost parents recently. While neither death was a surprise (both parents were of advanced age), it’s nonetheless a shock when it does actually happen, no matter how long the person has been ill and no matter how prepared you think you are to deal with it.
My parents saved me the angst of coping with their deaths in my mid-life by dying while I was in college, so I’m able to offer empathy to my friends who are now going through the experience.
My family has some traditions for our funerals, and one of them is the reading of the following poem at every funeral. I must offer thanks to the now-deceased Reverend Gerald Sappington, pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Webb City, Missouri, for giving us this poem many, many years ago.
I hope it brings comfort to those who need it.
Death is a Door
Nancy Byrd Turner
Death is only an old door
Set in a garden wall;
On gentle hinges it gives, at dusk
When the thrushes call.
Along the lintel are green leaves,
Beyond the light lies still;
Very willing and weary feet
Go over that sill.
There is nothing to trouble any heart;
Nothing to hurt at all.
Death is only a quiet door
In an old wall.