Crowd at Morgana Ciandri's funeral: "Your smile will shine forever. Goodbye Morghi, forever with us"

by Gabriele NutiTERRICCIOLA"Your smile will shine forever. Goodbye Morghi, forever with us". A large banner hanging on a wall in Terricciola is the greeting of hundreds of friends, acquaintances, fellow villagers, to Morgana Ciandri , the twenty-four-year-old from Morrona who died Wednesday morning at half past twelve, thrown from the car that ended up off the road on a semi-curve in via del Pino, in Aia Bianca, when she was just a few hundred meters from home. Morgana was greeted yesterday afternoon at 5:30 pm by hundreds of people. The parish church of San Donato, in the historic center of Terricciola, was packed. Even more people had to stay outside because the place of worship could not accommodate them all. At the end, when the light wooden coffin was carried out of the church by some friends, a long round of applause went up to the sky. A blue sky, lit by a very hot sun that is preparing to welcome summer.

The same sun that Morgana has been compared to by many in recent days, remembering her commitment to others. Her extraordinary willingness to always be of help to others. Her smile that she never denied to anyone. "In recent days, many of you parents, family members, relatives and friends have told me 'Morgana was like the sun' - said the parish priest Don Michele Meoli during the homily - And now her light shines before the eternal light that is God. It is beautiful when a young person is the sun. Now she is the sun before another sun, light before the eternal light". "Smile to God", added the priest looking at the coffin with Morgana's remains. "Your smile - said Don Meoli - is dew, comfort, for your parents, brothers, sister, family members and relatives and for each of us".

Morgana lived with her father and mother, two brothers and sister in Morrona, a hamlet of Terricciola. On Monday morning she was returning home from work when her car, a Renault Twingo, went off the road and overturned in a field. The young woman was thrown from the passenger compartment and this may have been fatal. She worked at the Nina bar and pastry shop in Le Melorie di Ponsacco. She had been employed for over a year and there, too, at work, she had immediately made herself well-liked by everyone. By the owner and by the customers. Before the job, she had done a year of civil service at the Misericordia di Selvatelle where everyone mourns her, remembering her for her extraordinary willingness to always be there to help the most fragile and needy.

Hundreds gave her their last farewell yesterday in the parish church of the village of Valdera. Lots of young people. Friends and acquaintances. Morgana was a girl who was loved by everyone and the extraordinary participation in the funeral was proof of that. Also present was the mayor Matteo Arcenni.

At the end of the funeral, a friend read a touching and moving farewell letter in which she recalled the 24-year-old's bond with her many friends in Terricciola, while another friend read St. Augustine's text "Death is nothing." "Death is nothing. I have simply passed to the other side: it is as if I were hidden in the next room..."