Am I Right To Be Feeling This Way?
Family Life0 min ago
I have just received a copy of a funeral service (hymns, prayers etc) that has a special page devoted to a poem written and signed underneath the poem by the Deceased's Daughter. I have no wish to burst her balloon but I am sure I have seen this poem on the www - also I was interested seeing she has signed it personally as being the author if this is plagiarism?
Letting Go ....
"God saw you getting tired; when cures were not to be
He grasp you in his arms and said "come and be with me"
In tears we saw you sinking, we watched you fade away
Our hearts were nearly broken; you fought so hard to stay
But when we saw you sleeping,so peacefully from pain
We could not wish you back with us to suffer yet again
So keep your arms around her Lord;and give her special care
Make up for all she's suffered and all that's seemed unfair
I cannot understand, why you took my Mom away
But as she always said; we'll walk again someday"
(signed: deceased's daughter)
(dated March 2005)
No best answer has yet been selected by muskrat26. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Possibly a little harsh there, muskrat26.
A brief search found it on the web on various sites in many different forms after the first few lines.
Obviously you have the advantage of knowing the people involved, but I'd say that the verse was dedicated to the mother because the daughter found them comforting and personal, rather than anything else.
I would be very surprised if somebody were to claim such words as their own in circumstances like this.
muskrat26, this exact poem and various versions of it seems to have been around for ever. I think I first saw it in the late 1980s. In many newspaper announcements about funerals, you can often see this same poem (or extracts and variations) in the same column so I'm sure many people will recognise it. There isn't too much problem here as the author is anonymous and in the circumstances (funeral) people will be fine about it.
Lodekka, you say you'd be surprised if somebody were to claim such words as their own in similar circumstances. This is something that happens quite frequently and causes problems. Churches are always advised to be very careful when they print poems in Order of Services and Newsletters as a few have run into legal battles over wrong attribution.and it can and has caused problems, . One church was nearly sued for giving a wrong attribution in a church. One family wanted me to include a poem in the Funeral Order of Service that the daughter (similar situation) had supposedly written. It was the well-known "All is well" ("Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped into the next room") by Henry Scott Holland. I really had to speak to the daughter on her own. For several minutes she insisted she had written it until I took a book off my shelf and showed her it and showed her 2 little cards with the same verse on.
She told the family and they were fine about it.
When I was seven my granddad died and I wrote a poem about it - it got printed in the local paper and I have since seen it printed in the obituary collumn on behalf of other children to their grandfathers.
I didn't have my name in there and simply left it "your granddaughter", but I certainly wouldn't dream of claiming anything and feel proud that someone else felt that they could relateand use it.