Wednesday, May 11, 2011

An Angel, Perhaps?

I’m rarely stunned by generosity, but last Friday it happened. I’d chased rabbit trails all week in search of an obituary of an old friend in Florida and had about given up. At 4:00 on Friday afternoon, when everyone was watching the clock, ready for the weekend, an angel named Heather who works for the Gainesville Sun came to my rescue.
After a flurry of e-mails back and forth in which she explained the reason the obit wasn’t online was because the family didn’t or couldn’t pay for it, she offered to send it to me. I hated to type the line I was thinking but had to—would there be a charge? It would be lame of me to assume there wasn’t one—and I’ve been charged ridiculous prices in the past for copies of documents at other businesses.
No charge. Friday afternoon and Heather pulled the obit. And not just one.
I opened my mailbox today and there sat an oversized envelope from the Gainesville Sun. Four copies of the obituary page were enclosed. They weren’t printed off Heather’s computer. She had pulled the copies from the newspapers.
Tomorrow, I’ll share my feelings on how a person’s life can be summed up in three lines, but today I’ll bask in the generosity of someone who cared about what mattered to me.

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