Product Description
This piece celebrates the life and mourns the loss of my granddaughter, Paisley Gladys Hogan, who was but 2 months old when she was called to Heaven. These are the words I wrote just before her funeral....
I. The Presence - She was here. I held her the day she was born. I held her and watched her smile at me less than 24 hours before she departed. She only knew love. No one around her ever showed her anything else that humanity had to offer; like hatred, heartache, pain, control, or anger.
II. The Shock - She feels a Hand beckon her to leave her mortal coil, and she enters into a world we cannot yet reach.. With no one home, her former body ceases to wake. The unimaginable has happened and we struggle to reverse it. Finally, it becomes clear that we cannot. She sees us cry and she wonders what is happening. Having never known sorrow, she only sees that love didn't cause this response. She wants to comfort us with the love she knows, but we do not yet sense it.
III. The Questions - One word has confounded mankind from its creation; "Why?" We have never found an acceptable answer. We ask, "Why did this happen?" and "What did I do?" and "What didn't we do right?" and "Why couldn't it have been me?" among others. We only know that her absence has carved holes in our hearts shaped like her. She tries to tell us, "You can still love me. I just cannot be seen by you now. It does not mean your love cannot make me happy. I still want it. I still feel it. Please feel my love for you."
IV. Letting Go - The day comes to bid farewell to the vehicle by which she came to us. We struggle to cope that we will see her face no more except in pictures. Because of the brevity of her life, memories are few to relive, but to do so is to recall happiness. In sorrow, we return her to the earth. All that is left is to return to recall, to talk to her, to bring flowers and other gifts, and to await the day we follow her.
V. Remembering - The days and years follow. Normalcy slowly sets back into our lives. The holes in our hearts will never fully heal. But the salve of her love and her memory help to soothe the ache. We still return to where we placed her mortal home, where we laugh and cry in tandem, where our hearts ache to fill the void left by her departure. It will never really get better, but it will become easier for her love to dull the sting of her absence.
VI. The Reunion - One by one, we will feel the same Hand bid us to come. The same events will befall those left behind each time. One by one, she will greet us as we reunite with her. We marvel at how she has stayed with us as we stay to comfort those we had just bidden farewell. The rest cannot be imagined by we that remain..........
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.