I Wish My Friend Could Have Read Her Own Obituary

I wish my friend Anne Garrels could have lived just a few days longer. She died early last Wednesday, but if she’d held on a few more hours, I like to imagine that she would have been able to enjoy (even while pretending to dismiss) the torrent of admiration from colleagues and listeners for her work as a foreign correspondent with National Public Radio. I wish she’d been able to read the that had prepared for her. Couldn’t they have shown it to her on Tuesday, when she was kept its finely wrought tribute from the one person it would have meant the most to. I wish she’d known how important she was especially to younger women in journalism—her drive, her honesty, her , her wit, her elegance, her courage. Maybe she did know, but I never heard her say so. And now those women can’t tell her.