Passing (Blogophilia 14.2)

 "Recommend this obituary to your friends."

The line startled me when I read it. Was this hard-coded into the website or did some bored secretary stick it in the frame header?  

The news wasn't unexpected. She'd been doing poorly for years. But it was a life worth celebrating and recommending. A 1970s-era housewife who roared. She set up a community services center for the disadvantaged and ran it through its first decade. She then handed the reins to capable management.

She was a person you either adored or despised. Headstrong and used to getting her own way,. She stepped on many toes. But things did get done.

The dissolution of a 30-year marriage after several kids was quite the bangarang for her friends. It seemed every week the Coconut Telegraph had something about her. The response was typical, go to seminary and spend the next 25 years in hospital chaplaincy, taking three of her friends with her. 

I look around the room. People who had known her way back when and now. 

I guess it was a magic carpet ride of togetherness and connectedness. 

Another boundless drop enters the boundless sea. 

Amen.