The fog creeps in on little feet.

Well, that’s how a renowned writer once described it. Imagery. Metaphor.

So. Just where am I going with this, you may ask.

Fog. Yes, fog. Early this morning, well before light, you could sense, feel, the fog. Thick. Visibility nil. And even as the new day struggled to become light, the dominant presence was still the fog.

All was still. Quiet. Almost, well, ethereal.

Such times lend themselves to introspection, you know, thinking “deep thoughts.” Pondering those imponderables. Okay. I’m getting a bit dramatic here, I know. And, Lord knows, I don’t want this to lead to thoughts noir.

Yet, we all have those times when we let our minds wander into the land of imponderables. Those things that are beyond our ability to fully comprehend.

Chief among such matters, for most of us, I suspect, is death. Others and our own.

Our younger daughter, Mary Bart, sends us things from time to time that she finds interesting, or compelling, or heart-touching, or troubling, or beautiful, or …

Not so very long ago she sent us an interesting perspective on death. A dark topic, yes, but the following does offer, at the very least, a bit of comfort … and hope.

“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room.

“Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

“Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity. Or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.

“Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

“What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner.

“All is well.”

May it be so.