REMEMBERING MAGGIE
IN THE WORDS OF HER FAMILY AND FRIENDS...
"Maggie would have been the best in whatever she chose to do. Her family is proud of her life and accomplishments and revels in her memories."
-- Rick, Maggie's stepfather
"Maggie was going to make a mark on this world."
--- Martha, Maggie's mother
"Maggie was one of those amazing people who had everything. She was intelligent, beautiful and athletic."
-- Maggie's college friend
"Maggie was really smart, she was top-notch, but she was so modest that she would never flaunt it. She was the kind of person that had great things coming."
-- Maggie's best friend
"Maggie was the reason why people like me stay in the [teaching] business. Her love of learning, her wide-range interests from biology to political science to history, her exceptional intelligence and acute analytic abilities, her competitiveness, her drive to excellence in athletics and her commitment to commity service and to helping others -- all these combined made her an extraordinary human being."
-- Maggie's college history professor
"Maggie always had her priorities straight.
She knew exactly what was the most important thing
to her, and she knew how to get it. While her school work was near the top of the list, her family
and her friends always came first."
-- Maggie's college roommate
"She wore a smile on her face that rivaled the most beautiful things in this world and spoke with a voice that soothed and invigorated those around her."
"Maggie had this way of making whoever she was talking to feel like you two were best friends, like she knew about everything in your life and she wanted to be the one to fix whatever the problem was."
"Maggie was everything I hope to become."
"Her smile could instantly light up a room!
And boy, could she dance!"
"Maggie was something to behold, a joy to watch and an inspiration to each and every one of us."
-- Maggie's college friends
"Maggie was a babysitter for our children. We were privileged to watch with awe as she blossomed from a shy, quiet academic into a shining, accomplished young woman."
-- Family friends of Maggie
"I am no longer content to live a private life and concern myself only with affairs that I perceive to affect me. . . The things I do in my public life can make a difference. I foresee myself raising a family eventually, and I do not want to pass on to them a world which I have made no attempt to better."
-- Reflections by Maggie in a school paper
"Maggie would be outraged by the way she died and would want us to do something about it. But she'd also have those of us who loved her so dearly find something in the way she lived to help us heal our pain, give us hope for the future and find a place in our hearts to forgive."
-- Maggie's Aunt Susan
*** For more tributes and memorials about Maggie
by her family and friends, click here.
When the Violin
When
The violin
Can forgive the past
It starts singing.
When the violin can stop worrying
About the future
You will become
Such a drunk laughing nuisance
That God
Will then lean down
And start combing you into her hair.
When the violin can forgive
Every wound caused by
Others
The heart starts
Singing.
-- Hafiz, a Sufi poet
___________________________
In one of the stars
I shall be living
In one of them
I shall be laughing
And so it will be
as if all the stars
were laughing
when you look
at the sky at night.
-- From "The Little Prince" (Le Petit Prince)
by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
__________________________________
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awake in the morning's hush
I am the soft uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there.
I did not die.
