Death is Nothing At All funeral reading

Here’s the next in my series of funeral readings you might like to consider for your loved one’s funeral or memorial ceremony. Some are sad, some are uplifting, some are comforting; there’s something for everyone here.

Readings are absolutely not a compulsory part of a funeral or memorial ceremony. Sometimes family members or friends desperately want to speak at their loved one’s funeral, but they haven’t got the wherewithal to write something themselves. Readings are a perfect stand-in: your emotions and feelings right there on the page ready for you to contribute.

Remember readings can be adapted – if your favourite reading is written for him, you can change it to her! If it’s written for Mum, you can change it to Dad or Grandma or Grandpa, whatever fits for you. Take out lines that don’t fit your circumstances. I just make sure to introduce such a reading as an adaptation.

Death is Nothing At All, by Henry Scott Holland

This famous and often used poem was actually not intended as a poem at all, but was written as part of a sermon following the death of King Edward VII in 1910.

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to 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 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 effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
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 around the corner.

All is well.
Nothing is past; nothing is lost
One brief moment and all will be as it was before
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Funeral Readings

• Funeral Readings: a new series!
• A Poem for Grandpa funeral reading
• Death is Nothing At All funeral reading
• Christopher Robin on Dying funeral reading
• God Saw You Getting Tired funeral reading