Victor Urum
This life is so unpredictable. So many great memories of Ndenyi; from when my sisters and I were just little kids around her, to more recently when she visited Atlanta and I had so much fun showing her around town. She saw how much I admired the Boston Globe bag (i.e. leather briefcase) she had, and she let me have it. I was so into that bag. It represented my personality so completely. I carried it everywhere, traveled so many places with it, and many things about that bag so often reminded me of Ndenyi... so intellectual, so unpretentious, so understated, so accomplished, so respectable even though we didn't agree completely in our many deep debates. And oh those debates! Those public knock-down, drag-out debates when neither of us would yield an inch. I cherished our debates for how they sharpened me, and the fact that they were with someone I'd so looked up to from childhood. I referred to her in them as "The Harvard Lady', because she brought every bit of the training she received there, and that I so admired, to our intellectual exchanges. That all meant so much to me.
This life is great, but so unpredictable and also unfair. Ndenyi was someone whom we should have had for much much longer. With her passing she has reinforced yet another lesson; that we really must cherish the people we love as though our time with them is very short. And that's the truth, no matter who is the subject. Rest In Peace, my beloved.
Victor Urum
