Two flowers for a life cruelly ended.

The Dies Irae below is not what Terri's memory deserves. I am left with two scenes from Tolkien, one from the end of the novel The Lord of the Rings, and the other an especially-apt screenplay adaptation of the same scene that appeared in Return of the King. In his sub-creation, brother John Ronald Reuel expresses the blessed hope beautifully:

And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

* * *
The screenplay:

Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way.

Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all changes to silver glass... And then you see it.

Pippin: What, Gandalf? See what?

Gandalf: White shores... and beyond: the far green country under a swift sunrise.

Pippin: Well, that isn't so bad.

Gandalf: No... No, it isn't.
* * *


Goodbye, Terri. Remember us as you take your place with the rest of the white-robed army.

[Update: The title has been changed (everything after "for"). The original ("the departed") sounded entirely too Felosian upon further review. Now it captures the reality better--"a life cruelly ended". Which it indisputedly was, right down to the morphine suppositories.]