Passings

This is a picture of my friend Sandy Compas. Sandy was tragically killed in a car accident Sunday near her Little Rock home. When I first met her, Sandy was an Ursuline nun. She later left the convent, but continued to work as a director of adult religious education for the Little Rock diocese. In a strange twist of fate or timing, whatever you wish to call it, I received the phone call about her death as I was returning home from the post office where I mailed her Christmas card. Like so many of us do with friends and acquaintances, she and I exchanged e-mails, Christmas cards, etc. but we hadn't spoken on the phone in quite a while. As usual, it was something both of us were going to get around to, but just never found the time to do. Unfortunately, now there will be no phone calls ever again.

I'm not sure what I can say, or should say. I go between being shocked and numb, to crying, to questioning why this had to happen to such a good person. I know we, as Christians, are supposed to believe that God has a plan for our lives, but I'm not sure I can find a rhyme or reason to this in God's plan for Sandy. I'm just trying to wrap my mind around the fact that she is gone, a person who devoted her life to bringing others to Christ, while others who tear the the image of Christ and religion down are left. When I told my mother last night, she said something that I've been struggling to accept, "Mayb e God leaves the others to give them another chance to become the kind of person that Sandy was." I just hope that I can learn to accept this and become more like she was.

Please keep Sandy, her family, and those of us who were blessed with the joy of her friendship in your prayers. We're all going to need it for a while. While I was looking for this photo, I found a letter from Sandy where she was giving me some ideas to use in the freshman religion class that I used to teach at St. Anns. In the letter, she had included a copy of a poem by Christina Rossetti called "Remember" that I think expresses the essence of what she would say to those of us she left behind if she could.

"Remember" by Christina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no longer hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more, day by day,
You tell me of our future that you planned.
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterward remember, do not grieve,
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.