Tuesday, October 22, 2024
It was with sadness and regret that I greeted the news of the passing of Richard Denis Gaines: I was sad that a friend, one that I made more than 50 years ago at The Law School, had died, but I regretted that I had not nurtured that friendship as I might, and should, have done. That aside, there never was any doubt, as his obituary confirms, that his would be a life well, and, more important, usefully lived. As such, there is much to be remembered and cherished. And so it will be, for the traits and characteristics that so well and uniquely defined Gaines remain, firmly ensconced in the hearts and minds of his family and the countless many, with whom he interacted and whose lives he so positively impacted during his life’s journey. Inevitably, in addition to retaining them, the family and those countless many will share and pass on those traits and characteristics during their interactions, going forward.
When my mother passed some years ago, a colleague sent me A Parable of Immortality by Henry Van Dyke for its perspective on remembrance and dying. I found it comforting and, so offer it to you for the same purpose:
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze, and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to meet and mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, “There! She’s gone!” Gone where? Gone from my sight — that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and 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 the 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: “There she comes!”
And that is — “dying.”
“It is Well!”
