And then someone offered to sing it: LaChanze herself.
''She said, 'I'd like to sing it as a gift to Calvin,' " Flaherty recalls. ''I don't know if I would have had it in me to be able to do that. It was incredibly simple and heartfelt and very moving."
For LaChanze, now starring in the Oprah Winfrey-backed Broadway musical ''The Color Purple," work was a critical part of dealing with the prodigious loss she suffered on Sept. 11.
Asked specifically how she handled the grief, she takes in a deep breath and says, ''Well, I got a sledgehammer, and I went to Tiffany's. . ." She smiles: ''I'm kidding." She has heard the question before.
''I have a great vehicle -- theater, drama," she says, turning serious. ''I was very angry and hurt and disappointed, and sad and lonely, everything. But I was able to come to the theater and completely leave my world for a moment."
Four years later, in a way, it feels like the grieving is happening all over again.
In ''The Color Purple," LaChanze plays Celie, the heavily burdened central figure of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel.
The character traces a vast emotional arc over four decades: Celie, separated from her sister and sold into an abusive marriage at 14, evolves by the curtain into a spiritually empowered, self-sufficient heroine.
In a recent interview in her dressing room, a cozy space decorated with photos of her two daughters, 5 and 4 -- she was eight months' pregnant with the younger on Sept. 11, 2001 -- and with a can of her beloved chocolate macadamia nuts close by, LaChanze says her personal loss informs the role.
''This grieving, it helped me to understand how one would come out of that," she says. ''Because I have come out of it. I was able to keep moving forward, keep putting one foot in front of the other. I think about that when I'm going through Celie's journey."
LaChanze has taken another step toward a new life. After commissioning artist Derek Fordjour to create a painting as a gift to the law firm that helped her following her husband's death, LaChanze married Fordjour last July.
