miss anne smedinghoff

i ignored kaitlin's call. i was enjoying a saturday morning brunch with lilly. it would have been silly to take the call. it would have been rude to take the call.

i ignored kaitlin's second call. weird, i thought.

jeremy, she texted. call me immediately, the second message read. the third explained the urgency. anne is dead.

anne and i joined the Foreign Service three years ago to live a dream. and while each of the 90 of in the 151st A-100 class knew full well that our dream involved sacrifice, it's hard to really imagine a dream ending in the final sacrifice. i was stupid enough to brag about the rather reckless approach we took to our adventurism and our invincibility: I join the foreign service not to die, but to live; it's just that sometimes in the pursuit of the former, the latter sadly happens too soon, i willed.

i haven't had to learn how to eulogize well in life. but i found that the typewriter helped when i finally turned to write to Anne's parents. in short, in retrospect, she was one of the greatest souls i knew. the youngest in our class. the most daring in our class. Anne was killed while delivering books to a school for Afghan girls. she was 25. i have a new hero always.