Chapel of Rest

In my father's cold, still beautiful hand, my mother placed a small posy of Rosemary, Lavender and Forget-me-Not, gathered from the garden, their stems bound together with a scrap of the blue wool she had used to knit one of my father's pullovers.
In death, my father appeared to be utterly at peace, with a suggestion of the faintest of smiles playing about his lips, as though he had been amused, and had registered that amusement with the ghost of an expression.
I realised, with an excruciating intensity of emotion, that his lovely eyes, eyes yet as innocent as a child's, would never open again, that we would never again hear his voice, never share the the substance of what had left that fragile smile traced upon his lips.