Out of Africa is a favorite movie of mine. The title of this post is a well known line from that movie. Karen Blixen says this when she finds out that she has Syphilis. She’s been faithful to her husband and he has no symptoms, so this comes as a shock to her.
I got a shock on Wednesday. In fact, I am only just coming out of shock. No, I don’t have syphilis. A dear friend of ours passed away. I saw her on Sunday, and she was fine. We chatted, briefly, because I had choir practice and then there was a presentation that I was interested in attending.
Apparently, she died at the beginning of the week, but wasn’t found right away. She lived alone. Her children (she was in her mid 60s) will be having a funeral for her about 2 hours from here. We will be having a memorial service at our church on the 15th.
She was the Religious Education minister at our church, which means that she arranged the religious education classes and presentations, she arranged the teachers for the classes, chose the curriculum, that kind of thing. My daughter is very broken up about this. She was very fond of Ms. Annie.
Ms. Annie had a big impact on so many people, but it didn’t stop her from being alone at the end. We can’t see who we impact in this life. We don’t know who will be left who will still think about us when we are gone.
I wonder who I have impacted.
