No one’s death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness. – Hermann Broch, 20th century Austrian writer and modernist.
SAD as it must be, there can be no gainsaying Dame Auntie Olga Lopes-Seale’s passing will have a lasting impression upon the surviving thousands she has helped over the past six decades, as on those who for 60 plus years witnessed her multiple ministering, even to the very poorest of the helpless.
Barbadians et al. touched by her compassion and caring, and the calmness but determination with which she sought to satisfy the needs of the deprived and neglected among us, should be the richer in their own humanness.
The human spirit is not unknown to be at its highest state of fulfilment giving empowerment to feeble and fallen fellowman – a state to which Auntie Olga could attest.
And so as we reflect on the life of charitableness that this devout social worker typified, it behoves us to ask, as a Christian community, if we collectively, or as individuals, have done sufficient to help the less fortunate. It demands more of us if it will be enough in time to come.
Can we, like the “multitalented humanitarian”, be so “charitable and compassionate, so understanding and caring above all else” that we carry Auntie Olga’s legacy of neighbourliness?
Starcom Network CEO?Vic Fernandes, in tribute to the charity worker, spoke of Dame Olga as having “an uncanny ability to mobilize critical forces to assist in her work” and an ability of “quietly [travelling] the length and breadth” of Barbados in search of those who were desolate, and personally delivering items they direly needed.
In essence, Auntie Olga not only talked the talk; she even more determinedly walked the walk.
And so those of us who would be emboldened by her humanness would be well guided by Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians.
Though we speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not charity, we are become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal . . . .And though we bestow all our goods to feed the poor, and though we give our body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth us nothing . . . .
It is that charity that Dame Auntie Olga Lopes-Seale personified.
