Love and hugs, from Helen.

As Don Meixner said, you will probably feel Graciela's presence at times. She has not left you and your family. She has gone to a different place, that is all.

The poem we read at my mother's funeral is a good reminder of this, and I think about it whenever I start feeling sad about my mother being gone from here.

Helen

Death is Nothing At All

                I have slipped away into the next room...
                I am I, and you are you,
                Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

                Call me by my old familiar name,
                Speak to me in the easy way 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 ghost of a shadow on it.
                Life means all that it ever meant -
                It is the same as it ever was;
                There is absolute unbroken continuity.
                What is 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 around the corner...
                All is well.

Henry Scott Holland
A Canon of St Paul's Cathedral