Last month, I dropped a stone for my college friend Mark – a fellow music major – and his wife and family on the occasion of their 27 year-old daughter’s passing from brain cancer. We took solace together as Mark and Sally and Jean and I heard the L.A. Master Chorale sing a tremendously powerful cantata on love and loss at Disney Hall in February. (That’s Mark and me with that concert hall’s pipe organ behind us). Its opening poem/lyric expresses an idea found in some of the world’s spiritual traditions, so I thought I would share it. It’s by lyricist Charles Anthony Silvestri, who lost his wife to ovarian cancer when their two children were quite young.

Whenever there is birth or death,
The sacred veil between the worlds
Grows thin and opens slightly up
Just long enough for Love to slip,
Silent, either in or out
Of this our fragile, fleeting world,
Whence or whither a new home awaits.
And our beloved ones draw near,
In rapt anticipation, or in weary gratitude, they stand;
Our loved ones stand so close, just here,
Right here, just on the other side
Of Eternity