She was born in 1925 and died in 2023, just a few months shy of ninety-eight years. Over the span of her years, she divorced once, was widowed twice, and lived the last eight years of her life alone. So far as the world’s accounting goes, I suppose she never achieved any lofty goals: no remarkable athletic achievements, no outstanding political accomplishments, no impressive financial coups. And yet, I would hold that Marjy Cottle lived an extraordinary life. Remarkable most especially to me for the way she refused to relinquish her faith or her happiness.

Marjy initiated her divorce in 1963, in Oklahoma, after seventeen years of marriage. Divorce is nearly always painful but, in that era, in that place, it would have been a really tough experience. Lots of stigma, regardless of circumstances. She married again nine years later and was widowed when leukemia took Bob after twenty-five years. Subsequently, she renewed acquaintance with a high school classmate, moved back to Kansas from Texas, and married Freddie when she was seventy-five. Fourteen years later, he passed, and she found herself alone again.

In addition to those losses, she’d endured the agony of miscarriages, including one that was within a month of full term. She was never able to carry a child to birth. Nonetheless, she poured love into her community and family, including siblings and numerous nieces and nephews.

Through all that she endured, Marjy continued to choose faith, joy, and happiness. I would imagine that no one would have failed to understand if she’d grown bitter and resentful, and shut herself off from the world and its pains. Even into her nineties, she continued to attend the church she’d first joined when she was fourteen years old. She’d pretty well retained her mental capacities right up unto the end.

As part of the honoring of her life, her family created a slide show of snapshots taken over the decades. While taking pictures showing on the TV monitor at the funeral home during visitation, I accidentally created a “double exposure” that I believe actually revealed Marjy’s secret. The intended picture is one of her at around ten years old, standing in the yard of an old farmhouse, waving at someone off screen. Since the slideshow advanced to the next image at that instant, there’s also a ghost image of her uncle holding her as an infant with her aunt also in the shot.

Looking at the serendipitous image, I wondered, “Is Marjy waving goodbye or hello?” As I further studied and contemplated, I thought, “What a great lesson!”

You see, in order to hold onto both sanity and happiness, Marjy had to say goodbye to all the pains of her past. Let go of the former happiness now turned to sorrow in order to embrace the next of her life and welcome tomorrow. Let go of the regrets and the painful decisions and turn instead, in faith, to the future. She waved “hello” to whatever came next in life and moved forward.

When we choose faith instead of fear, acceptance instead of regret, and grace instead of bitterness, we, too, can live extraordinary lives.