Mitzi and I went to see the Blue Angels in Jacksonville Beach on Saturday. I took way too many pics. I've done the initial cull, now I have to go through many similar shots and decide which ones I like best, and get the number down from the hundreds to something manageable.

We took the shuttle bus because parking is always a challenge, and traffic getting out of Jax Beach can be frustrating. While we were sitting on the bus, Mitzi got a call from her ex-husband. She let it go to voicemail. His message was for her to call him, he had some terrible news, although he said it was not immediate family.

We got to the car and I drove so Mitzi could talk. Since it's her car, the phone pairs with it and the conversation was on speaker.

The young woman, Samantha Woll, who was murdered in Detroit on Saturday, was someone they knew. They knew the parents, and Mitzi's daughters and the Woll's all went to Cranbrook together. Sherri, Mitzi's oldest, is Samantha's age, they were friends, and Sherri had just spent the previous weekend with her in Detroit.

Sherri didn't want to speak on Saturday, but she and Mitzi spoke on Sunday. I overheard the sobs.

The funeral was yesterday, and as has become the custom these days, it was love-streamed. (It's a typo, but I left it. Because I think it's right.)

I didn't know Sam or her parents, but I wanted to know something about someone who clearly meant so much to people who mean something to me, so I watched the funeral with Mitzi.

It was clear from everyone who spoke that an absolutely remarkable woman was taken from the people who loved her, and they were many. Some of the speakers mentioned that, although she died at a young age, she'd achieved more in her brief life than most people could achieve in a lifetime, or several lifetimes.

She was especially active in the area of social justice, a term that has become a pejorative for many people on the right. Something I wrote about Saturday morning, over in Notes From the Underground. Someone described her work as "faith in action," in perhaps the Jewish sense of "healing the world," but also in a larger context I think. The one that I understand, which is that "love is faith in action."

Mitzi has sat in on many love-streamed funerals, I'm afraid. The most recent before this one was just two weeks ago, for a young man in the IDF, killed on October 7th. Mitzi knew his parents. She was a camp counselor to his mother, and she still keeps in touch with many of her campers.

And Sam wasn't the first bit of sad news on Saturday. When Mitzi was a young woman, she went to Brenau Academy, a boarding school for young women. It's now Brenau University, and Mitzi has become something of an active alum. We'd both met the president of the university, and Mitzi had been a guest of hers at a visit to the university earlier this year. Back then, I think she'd only recently learned of her leukemia diagnosis, which she shared with Mitzi, and yesterday we learned that she'd succumbed to it.

We watched some TV last night. I wanted to finish season 2 of Foundation, and a major plot point was the deaths of several characters. Then we watched the second episode of Lessons in Chemistry, which deals with the death of a main character as well.

It all seemed a bit too much. But I love a talking dog, even if we're only hearing his thoughts. And Mitzi seemed to like his closing thoughts about running. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I suppose it's not all we can do, but for now it feels like enough.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:08 Monday, 23 October 2023