My Friend Salwa

O you who depart from us — whither? Where do you go, leaving us these deep wounds that sorrow digs in our hearts, wounds that pain deepens each time a dear beloved joins the caravan of the departed? It may be supposed that the passing of time is warrant enough for their healing — but how far from it! Time passes, lodging in our wounds sting after sting, until its hand falls short of closing them and its power fails to cure them. Indeed, this chasm that the loss of one dear and precious opens in our life finds in our souls the answering echo of a dreadful desolation, and the darkness of a fearful emptiness that may slide us down into the pits of deadly despair.

It may rouse in us a revolt against the judgment of harsh fate, and a rage at the descent of the stern decree; but it clears away into the revolt of the weak, who submits, abased, willing or unwilling. I hold that man is able to triumph over the blows of time in all their kinds; but the blow of parting from the living shatters in us every claim to triumph, and binds us with collars of grief that go on wringing our hearts and giving us bitterness to taste in all its colors, until life itself departs from us.

The loss of Salwa stirred in my soul the sharpest anguish and pain that death can stir; with her there was stripped from me a part of this life — a part that bore with it the sweet memories of childhood, the hopes of smiling youth, and the blessing of unfailing friendship.

Her image rises before my eyes even now, and I see her only as a fragrant flower half-hidden behind its fresh leaves, or as the living smile on the lips of a small child, or as the refreshing breeze amid the breath of biting heat, or as the light, plaintive song in the mouth of a warbling bird.

She passed through this life and walked its branching roads — some easy going, some steep to climb; but she crossed them all with a contented soul and a calm, gentle smile, neither shouting for joy at success nor filling the world with complaint when difficulties piled up in her face. I knew her as the young girl overflowing with intelligence and vitality, yet raising no clatter and stirring no storm.

I knew her as a teacher leading her girls along the paths of goodness and success, without wounding their tender lives with harsh reproof, or trying to make light of their whims with cutting rebuke.

Then I saw her as a wife, building for married happiness a nest that she nourished from the essence of her heart and perfumed with the fragrance of her spirit, until she made of it a palace of felicity in which she gloried over time; and she prepared for her husband in it all the help, affection, management, and tenderness that a loving wife has it in her power to give a beloved husband. She was the ideal wife, and her home the ideal refuge of happiness.

And I knew her as a writer who drew from the pains of mankind the matter of her pen, coloring it with the colors of human feeling, pouring into it what people suffer of poverty and privation, or what they meet of the cruelty of the days, until she made you feel that she was pouring into its cleft some of her heart's blood or her eyes' tears. Then she would turn in it to reform, drawing on what issued from her great heart and what her generous, forbearing soul exuded, until she came to occupy in women's letters a distinguished place and contributed a notable share to the renaissance of woman.

And I knew her as a lady of society who did not seek to force herself upon it; rather she moved gently, cutting a path in her circle and taking up in it a fitting place, unmarred by haughtiness and undisfigured by shrinking, until she drew all eyes — and behold, she was the object of trust; behold, she was what the leading spirits sought.

And I knew her, in all her roles, as a friend who won the hearts of her friends with a sweet gentleness. In debate she lacked no boldness, nor did she want for readiness of

encounter; but she avoided paining the one she spoke with by an ill word, or a saying that touched his feelings. She could be firm in her criticism without visiting an opinion upon another or making him feel the weight of the criticism; indeed, she never for a moment abandoned a soft gentleness and a kindly mildness. She was the favorite among her friends, holding their love alone.

And if the loss of the departed is measured by the measure of the void they leave, then women's society has felt at her loss a collapse in its midst — a breach that it would be hard for any other to fill. When it feels for her place and finds only emptiness, it knows what a grievous loss our loss in Salwa was, and what a painful desolation she has left in our hearts. But she walked through this life smiling and content, and she went to meet her Lord smiling and content. Are we, then, able to receive our affliction in her with a smile and with content??