Here's To Her

Yesterday morning, my mom's best friend in England died. I guess I can't remember her age but she was up there and she lived a great life. I only ever spoke to her twice a year usually and then had the occasional visit but Mom talked with her every few days. It was sad to lose someone like her, and it was worse for my mom, but the kind of life she lived made it a whole lot easier for everyone to say goodbye, I think. I guess you could call her my godmother, my parents met Edna a few months before I was born and my mom's mom died a few months after I came about, so Edna really was Mom's adopted mother in a way. Edna lived through World War II as a child, hiding in bomb shelters as the Nazi's bombed London. I'm sure my mom knows a lot more personal stories of Edna's life but I never had the time with her that she did. I do know that Edna was an awesome painter. Most of the pictures hanging in my house were done bye Edna. Always bright and colorful, usually floral or some other landscape. Matched her personality. She was so bright and loving. Just one of those people that even though you talk to them... once in a blue moon, they encourage you and motivate you to live your life with love every day. It was always so hard to complain when you thought about Edna, who had no other family from the time we met her to the time she passed away, lived a simple life but full of joy for the Lord. The kind of person I only wish my children could meet one day, because there are fewer and fewer of their kind left in this world. I know she's in a better place now... which also makes it easier to say goodbye.

Then I compare her life to the girl in my IT audit class that was killed two days ago. She just came over from China to get a graduate degree in accounting, and for some reason not yet known, some guy she knew just killed her in the Graduate Life Center. I saw her once, it was a small grad class so you notice everyone, but not so small that you get to know everyone the first day. I have no idea what her life was like... but yet again it reminds me that life is so uncertain. The only certainty is God and His love.

I'm not going to make any other real spiritual applications of all this, but I felt like introducing these two events, to let them be known, first of the life of joy and fulfillment, and second of a life that any of us would call too short.