Hello,
I need to tell you about my young friend.
She is only a couple of years older than my Kimberli, she is a wife and a mother of two, and a grandmother of four. The most well known fact about her is her love for Jesus, her family, and her friends (and the color pink!). The other well known fact about her is she has been suffering from tumors in her brain for a long time that have plagued her with seizures, shakes, and unsteadiness on her feet; she had to quit working about eight years ago. Eighteen months ago we found out that three of the tumors had become malignant. The prognosis wasn't good as they had not been discovered, as they should have been, in time for surgical or radiation/chemo removal. She was given maybe three months to live if she did nothing, but because of her love of life and love of her family she decided to begin radiation and chemo-therapy. She silently suffered from the radiation burns on her head and ears and the ravages of the chemo because she wanted to love and prepare her family and friends for her passing. If you were to spend some time with her, she would tell you that you cannot be angry with the doctors and surgeons because it was the will of God that she became terminal and there was nothing the doctors could do to stop the inevitable progression of the disease. She would make you promise not to be angry with God because of her disease but to rejoice in the fact that He thought her strong and capable of making a difference in peoples lives by showing them how to love God through adversity. She has touched more people than she realized because she made us feel compelled to tell of her love for God to our friends and relatives, and they in turn did the same It would not surprised me in the least that by the time all who have known of her and all who have known her have died, she would have touched billions of lives. That is the legacy that she left when she danced her way to heaven, in her pink cloud, in the wee hours of Sunday morning. She has been gone a smidgen more than 24 hours but I feel like the whole world knows of her passing and mourns with those of us who were lucky enough to be graced with her presence.
Goodbye, dear friend, I pray that you are right, that we will see each other again.
Liv
