Explaining Dying

My mother showed me this today, and I thought it was a beautiful analogy.

What is Dying?
 
I am standing on the sea shore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the
morning breeze, and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty, and I stand and watch
her, until at last she fades on the horizon.

Then someone at my side says “There, she has
gone” - Gone where?
Gone from my sight - that is all.
She is just as large in the mast, hull and spars as
she was when she left my side.

The diminished size and total loss of sight is in
me and not in her. And, just at the moment
when someone by my side says “She’s gone” -
others on a distant shore take up the glad shout -
“There she comes!”

Bishop Brent of the Phillipines, 1862 - 1929