Life Is Not Purgatory

A Eulogy
My father called my today and told me that my godmother passed away in her sleep quietly and peacefully as she would have wanted it. Now, for those who know me it would probably surprise them to find out that I actually have godparents – that when I was baptised Anglican the cathedral didn’t get struck by lightening or some other ill-omen of foreboding doom.

Linda was a wonderful person, the kind of person who in the last stages of her life is someone I could look towards and see someone whom I can hope I would be able to exemplify should I ever go through what she did… diagnosed with a terminal cancer with precisely zero chance of survival – bone cancer.

She was diagnosed in the autumn of 2004, and was told that she would be lucky to survive till Christmas, this despite her husbands employment with the Saudi Aramco – the world’s largest oil company with literally the best medicine that money can buy… but survive she did. In fact, she saw two Christmas’, came back to Canada to for a surprise birthday party for friends earlier this year that everyone knew would be the last time any of her Canadian friends would see her alive.

I regret that fate conspired to prevent me from see her in any of her last trips to Canada, despite my best efforts. But with grace and poise until the very end, I can only hope that in my final moments I will be able to show even half the composure she did. Goodbye Linda.