WESTERLY — Gerrit Schmidt smiles from nearly every photo of a 6-square-foot collage his son compiled for his father’s funeral last February.

The collage shows Schmidt from when he was a boy in Holland to when he was surrounded by his wife, three grown children and six grandchildren.

In 1988, when Schmidt was diagnosed with a brain tumor, he was given less than a year to live. Nancy Schmidt thought they would never see their 25th wedding anniversary.

They celebrated their 42nd in June 2006, about eight months before he died.

“He lived to see all his children graduate,” get married and have children of their own. “He never once complained or said ‘Why me?” said Nancy Schmidt, looking back on a vibrant marriage despite the tumor that eventually took her husband’s life.

“I can’t praise hospice enough,” she kept saying. “I could call them for anything.”

Hospice care provided by VNA of Care New England made it possible for Gerrit to live at home and eventually die there, surrounded by family.

Nancy is looking forward to sharing the story of her husband with others who have lost a loved one. She and her children have been chosen by VNA of Care New England as guests of honor at a ceremony tonight at City Hall in Warwick, where the organization is based.

The annual Circle of Love and Light ceremony, followed by the lighting of a Hospice Tree, will give people a time to reflect on a lost loved one during the holidays, as a way of coping and moving on.

With candlelight, music and prayer, the ceremony gives people permission to think about their loved one, said Elaine Peterson, former director of public relations and development at Care New England, now with Lifespan.

“It’s really so lovely,” Peterson said. “This really gives people a full time of contemplation to just sit quietly and think,” as opposed to going through the motions of daily life and holiday rituals that might feel hollow when a loved one is missing.

“A lot of families need it,” Peterson said.

Tonight’s ceremony, which starts at 6, is the 17th tree lighting and the 7th wreath lighting for VNA of Care New England.

A wreath that will hang in the VNA of Care New England office, at 51 Health Lane in Warwick, with a scroll listing the names of loved ones for whom contributions have been made, will also be lit during the ceremony. Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian and Dr. Alfred Arcand, hospice medical director for VNA of Care New England, will speak.

Nancy Schmidt, 67, wrote her remembrance speech about a month ago. It tells how her husband-to-be served in the Dutch Royal Airforce, came to America to study horticulture, met his future wife at church, became a florist (and eventually part owner of Smith’s Flower Shop in Westerly) and learned at age 47 that he had less than a year to live.

“I hope I’ll be able to read it,” Nancy said, adding that if she loses her composure, she will ask her son, Paul, who was in high school when his father was diagnosed with the tumor, to read it for her.

Paul’s two children, Cayse, and Kiarra,, will be there, as will Nancy’s older daughter, Petra, who named her two boys after her brother and father, and Karin, whose twins Nathan and Ethan liked to scoot in their walkers around the foot of their grandfather’s bed to peek at him and squeal with delight.

When the Schmidts decided “no more treatment” in 2004, Nancy called VNA for help caring for her husband. His life expectancy then was about six months. The visiting nurses suggested the family apply for hospice care and sent someone over.

Nancy said she couldn’t have survived her husband’s last years, much less cherished her time with him, without help from visiting nurses, hospice care workers, her family and friends.

Hospice provided the bed, commode and wheelchair, as well as rubber gloves, bed pads and other supplies.

“They became family,” she said. “He always had a smile on his face when the hospice nurse came to visit.”

At VNA of Care New England, hospice care is authorized six months at a time for anyone with a terminal diagnosis. Nancy considered her husband a healthy person with a brain tumor, and she kept renewing his care.

Bedridden from October of 2005 to his death in February 2007, he never got bedsores, Nancy said. A nurse came once a week to check him and ask about his appetite.

“The day I tell you he’s not eating well,” she said she told caregivers, would be the signal for the end.

She was right. Two and a half weeks before he died, he lost interest in food. “His brain wouldn’t tell him to swallow,” she said.

Five days before the end, a kitten came into their lives.

The kitten’s acrobatics provided comic relief, and her purring warmth helped Nancy do her grieving.

“I don’t seem to do it so much or so desperately as I used to,” she said. The full-grown and fluffy Maisy now reigns over the comings and goings of the Bradford neighborhood from a sunny front window. She maintains a regal expression despite her clownish calico splotches and a butterscotch mustache.

“I’m happier than I am sad,” Nancy said, “because of the memories, or maybe because we were so close.”

She said she and Gerrit followed a piece of advice through their whole marriage — never go to bed mad.

“Sometimes there were angry kisses goodnight,” she said, but they never carried an argument into the next day.

“I want everyone to know what a nice guy he was,” she said. “We had a lot of faith.”

They lost their first child, a son, at age 4. “That made us stronger.”

Thanksgiving of 2006 was their last together. She spent the holiday this year visiting her sister.

“It makes me miss him but it also makes me thankful for the times we did have together.”

She said she did have moments when she was ready to throw in the towel, but she learned to appreciate what she had.

“I always dreaded the inevitable for 19 years. You do appreciate every day.”

dnaylor@projo.com