Surprise! A Tribute to Lynell

Lynell Marchese Zogbo (1948-2026) Africa - tribute by Joyce Carlson

We lost a friend this week. Not lost forever, but she’s gone from this world. It was a hard passing after years of medical attention and stress and finally agony. It was hard on her family, and grievous to us all. But she wasn’t unprepared. 

Not really. Behind the effort to stay—to beat a relentless cancer; to stay with her family and do her work and cling to life in this world—there was still the latent knowledge that all this effort of living a short life on earth had to come to an end.

We all know it. But we keep pushing that knowledge away as long as we can. We pray for healing here and now, knowing that in fact, our real health will come to us when we leave our tortured bodies and return to the God who made us, and see face to face the one who died and came back to life. The one who has taken up his body again in the full glory of resurrection.

So she, Lynell Marchese Zogbo, wasn’t completely unprepared. But she was surprised! She said so herself just last week. She was surprised at the sudden downturn in her health, and the speed at which the doctor said she needed to go into hospice.

I wonder if surprise isn’t one of the most fundamental emotions we people here in this world experience. We are continually amazed. Whether things go well or badly, one way or another, we’re not ready for what happens, and even the most hardened sceptics (I defy them to be calm in whatever state they happen to be) are above all surprised when they come to their final hour.

So we pray. “What! Prayer? Has it come to that?” Sarah Gudschinsky is said to have said. Yes, it comes to that. So we prayed. We crossed our fingers and hoped she wouldn’t die.

But she is gone and I am raking over the memories left to me.

• The time Bob and I went with Lynell and a tall, dark, handsome guy to the San Diego Wild Animal Park in 1977 or ’78. We were shoving our small daughter around in a stroller while Lynell walked ahead of us with—can you believe it?—Georges Zogbo. We contemplated the new arrangement and weren’t surprised when they got married.
• The time when Bob and Lynell spent three days at a linguistic conference in Leiden while Georges and I looked after the kids. Personally, I think Georges and I had the better deal.
• The time we celebrated Thanksgiving with Georges and Lynell in Daloa, Ivory Coast. While Bob and I spent a couple of hours bucketing water up several flights of stairs to our hotel room (because wouldn’t you know it, the water was cut off), Lynell maneuvered a relatively large bird in and out of her oven. Then we all spent the afternoon recovering with turkey and loads of pie. It’s what we do. We celebrate and carry water—in Mali, Ivory Coast, Kenya—and as often as not, the lights go out.
• And our last visit together was in November 2023 when we spent the day by the sea in Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast. Avocado vinaigrette, pink shrimp dripping in butter, golden sand under our toes and the soft wind off the sea. We kept hoping it wasn’t the last time.

And it won’t be the last time. There’s more to come when the heavens roll up like a scroll and all things are made new. We’re waiting for that day with anticipation, and of course we’re going to be surprised.