The following is a passage written by James Murdock in Honor of Debra Barrett.

The time will come for each of us to leave this world behind. The door of our own dirge will open and our weary soul will pass through it. All the years of pain and hope, of holding hands and looking into lovely eyes, all the flowers and birds, all the accumulation of joy and disdain will have led us here. This is not something that happens only to other people, not an abstract passage or the end of a dream – it is the door you see behind you now.

Every soul must leave the realm of possessions to journey across a landscape beyond the earth. Beyond mountains and valleys and churches and bars and grocery stores. Never will we be seen in those places in the same form again, yet, in those places, we will live on. In every laugh between friends, in the hearts of our children, when our name is thought of or spoken, in every story retold, in bread and bottles shared, when the daffodils return in spring, when music rings in the air, and in the quiet moments of the minds of those we treasured, we will live on.

The truth is that each of us makes a great, deep impression in this world, whether we want to or not. Each of us digs a gully, and when we’re gone, that gully feels more like a great divide, an impassable abyss. But it isn’t impassable. Each of us will walk across it. The depth of our gully will be measured, the impression we left, felt, the love or the malice we gave, passed on down the line.

Death is a doorway but not an end. So let us love completely, forgive wholly, without judgment or condition. Let us remember what was lost but celebrate the victory of passing – the triumph over tragedy and over the shortcomings of this world. Let us sing for what was lost, knowing its presence is within us, and let us rejoice in knowing that love will always return. Tomorrow, on that distant shore, the music will go on.