Julia Has Passed

She was the strangest personality I ever knew.. weak yet strong: ailing yet sound.. She was able to draw to her darkened room and her still bed the ears and the eyes of people.. She is one of those personalities that cannot be forgotten.

Yesterday a grain of sand parted from among the sands and sank into the depths of infinity. A grain parted that was mighty and hard.. Its spirit slipped free of the transparent gauze called a body.. It left that frail thing bound to its bed and soared beyond the confines of her room.. raising a stir, so that society speaks her name aloud.. not as a sick female good for nothing.. but as a strong spirit good for everything.

And it seemed as though the procession would move on as usual, teeming and brisk.. as though a grain of its sands had not gone never to return.

But the procession, in truth, missed the hard, radiant grain of sand. It missed her as a leader, a thinker, a guide.

And it misses her as a human being who bore, along with her own cruel pains, the pains of others, and was able to lighten them.. They would enter her room with bitterness in their hearts and faintness in their strength.. and go out after the veined, soft hand had wiped their brows.. and the faint voice had breathed strength and courage into their souls.

And the procession misses her as a bold spirit that rose above differences.. and understood religion as Gibran understood it when he said: "The truly religious man does not bind himself to a sect.."

The procession of the sands misses her as a grain distinguished by daring, so it marched in the vanguard.. distinguished by endurance, so it bore without complaint.. distinguished by liberation and light, so it outran its age by stages..

It will remember her not as "one grain of sand among grains" but as a grain of a strange kind, hard of element.. the kind of which rocks are usually formed.

The procession marching toward infinity will miss her always..

So, condolence to her family.. and her friends.. and her many loving admirers.. condolence in this: that she will not be forgotten.