Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of 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 that 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 an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this 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 round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; 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!
Text from archive.org. Public domain in the US and UK.
Where it comes in the service
At a Catholic funeral Mass the readings must come from Scripture, so a poem belongs at the vigil or in the words of remembrance. A Church of England funeral can include poetry; the Church prints poems on its own funeral planning page. In a humanist ceremony, readings of poetry and prose follow the tribute.
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Death Is Nothing at All is in the public domain in the United States (first published 1919 (sermon preached 1910)) and in the United Kingdom (author died 1918), so the words can be printed in a booklet without permission or a fee.
Printed here as in the source, except: Source is archive.org OCR of the 1919 printing; OCR error ']am_ I' corrected to 'I am I' (confirmed by the Wikisource transcription of the sermon); Removed the printer's spaces before '?' and ';' (French spacing in the 1919 typesetting); Removed the opening and closing quotation marks that enclose the passage in the sermon.