29/11/1918 - 6/9/2007
"I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly." Madeleine L'engle
It's been a couple of months now since my favourite author Madeleine L'engle died but I still feel a huge sense of loss. She was 88 years old and living in a nursing home after a stroke. When I look at some of the last photos of her before she died, I'm reminded of how my mum looked in her last year. She was still my mum and I loved her but part of her had already gone forever. So my brain tells me that this is okay. Madeleine L'engle was a vibrant, creative, independent person and she believed in a God who loved her intimately. I know without a doubt she would have looked forward to this next stage of her amazing life. For her it's not the end but a beginning.
Still, my heart isn't quite as ready as my head. When people like Madeleine die, the characters who lived inside them die too. So not only am I grieving for her but for the characters I loved, the books I will never read, the things she still had left to teach me. The thing about Madeleine L'engle was that she changed you. Not just the way you think or view the world but the person you are. How? I don't think I can quite explain it. I just know that she was just different from any other author I've ever read.
When she died I googled her name to read what news sources were saying about her and I discovered that so many people felt the loss. This article I found describes why I loved Madeleine L'engle better than I could myself.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/09/10/lengle/
Yes, she was many things to many people and she was important to me. I miss her.
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