An Ode To My Custodian: Ms. Brenda, We Love You | The Odyssey Online
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An Ode To My Custodian: Ms. Brenda, We Love You

Thank you for being the reason I stayed at Loyola.

Amanda Waggoner
Apr 04, 2016
Loyola University Maryland
87
An Ode To My Custodian: Ms. Brenda, We Love You

Ms. Brenda,

•

I sorely needed...to learn to love the world and stop comparing it to some world I only wished for and imagined, some sort of perfection I myself had dreamed up, but instead to let it be as it was and to love it and be happy to belong to it.

•

It was on the last day of my first semester at Loyola that I remembered the above quotation from Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha," an Indian love poem that meant nearly everything to my truly broken soul.

"to let it be as it was

and to love it

and be happy to belong to it."

•

On the morning I vividly recalled that prayer, I resolved to surrender every former feeling of sadness, helplessness, frustration, and desperation to God. I prayed that the Universe would just take me, mold me, and make me an instrument of Its peace. Upon remembering that quotation, I was overcome with the feeling that something so much greater than myself was finally guiding me to the light.

Ms. Brenda, I believe that it was you who guided me to this perpetual light that I so blissfully bask in today.

And I thank the Universe for sending you to me, from heaven to earth, as an angel in the form of the magnificent custodian of Flannery O'Conner Hall at Loyola University Maryland.

•

•

I will never forget the moment you met my parents on the very day that I allowed my sadness to renew itself into love. You grabbed my mother's arm and you told her with a sense of urgent sincerity that I was something special to you, a person with spirit and style - your friend. Watching my maternal mother connect with my mother away from home filled me up with the desire to let it all be as it was, to truly love it all, and to live with the utmost happiness to belong to it.

I know that I speak on the behalf of Loyola University Maryland when I say that I love you. Talking with you every morning makes everything worth it. Hugging you reminds me that there really are angels on earth. Seeing your eyes light up when you talk about your grandson makes me excited for what's to come.

•

Ms. Brenda, thank you for exuding warmth and love and authenticity from every pore of your being. Thank you for being the one to listen to us when it feels like no one else will. Thank you for forgiving us when we're messy and for laughing with us when we're funny and for being our best friend.

Thank you for being the reason I stayed at Loyola.

And thank you for being you.

You truly are my angel.

•

With gratitude, love, and the utmost respect,

Amanda Waggoner, 535 B

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