Gone From My Sight

Greg and I are heartbroken this week.  

Greg's cousin, Cody, lost his long-time battle with cancer on Monday night.  Our minds are filled with grief, but our souls are filled with hope and praise of the glorious, eternal life Cody is experiencing with our Heavenly Father. 

 

Greg and Cody's Aunt Diane posted these words about her nephew.  It is what her father, Cody's "Papaw," would be saying as to Cody's passing.  They are adapted from Henry Van Dyke's Gone From My Sight.

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads his white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. He is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch him until at length he hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says: “There, he is gone!”
“Gone Where?”
Gone from my sight. That is all. He is just as large in mast and hull and spar as he was when he left my side and he is just as able to bear his load of living freight to his destined port.
His diminished size is in me, not in him. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: “There, he is gone!” there are other eyes watching his coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “Here he comes!”