Shayna
A Life to Remember
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning
breeze and stars for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and
watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the
sky come to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says: "There, she is 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 she is just as able to bare her load of living
freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the
moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!" There are other eyes
watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"
And that is dying.
--by Henry Scott Holland
Shayna: a Victim of Melanoma Cancer
Shayna's Grave Marker,
Mt. Sinai Cemetery, Los Angeles CA