Living with Purpose

When I got back from Seattle there was a sad message waiting on my answering machine.One of my closest friends had lost her grandmother. My friend and I are as close as sisters.  I have not known life without her. We lived next door to each other from the time we were born and grew up together. So her grandmother was like my grandmother. 
And what a woman she was.
 She was an adventurer, a traveller, an independent woman who was ahead of her time.  She seemed fearless, travelling to every corner of the world...quite often by herself.  Always going somewhere.
She was elderly when she passed.  In her nineties.
I'm sad she has gone.
I'm sad for my friend and for her family.
But when I think of her I think of how she lived....with purpose. With drive and strength. And with an insatiable curiousity for the world.
A purposeful life very well lived.