The Parting Gift
When the time comes, we will leave our bodies,
Leave this earth,
Leave everyone, yet meet everyone, forever more.
We will part from those who love us, Not Forever.
We must remember when our time comes,
We will once again meet the ones we love- and many more.
Just as Shakespeare said, "Parting is such sweet sorrow."
We have such sweet memories,
We hurt because they are not with us.
Death always hurts the witness more than the victim.
A special part of our loved ones will always be with us,
Giving us life, giving us being- remembrance is being.
Like music, their will forever flow through us.
Death brings new life, a better one.
He didn't die, he was born.
By Dustin Slater age 10
December 2001
Dustin wrote this to console his school's secretary whose elderly mother had just passed.
He was himself at that time in the last stages of his losing battle with his brain tumor. Treatment had ceased and he was not expected to see Christmas. He help on, however, until April the next year so he could be the birth coach for his niece Alyssa.
