JUST WORDS

Nelson Mandela died on Thursday. He was sick for a long time and we knew it would come but you don’t feel the weight until it falls. I know how to play with words and sometimes I say something worth hearing but I’m a lightweight. There’s nothing I can say about Mandela that will not be said better by someone else. Maya Angelou; she is for real, today read a poem in tribute to him. Titled, “His Day Is Done.” she alluded to the sun and the fact that it can not avoid its own sunset. But she left the window open for someone, someday to rise up and usher in a new morning. Nelson Mandela was born into an ugly, unforgiving world and he helped change it. Somebody had to and it fell to him. 

I felt a sense of loss when Jacques Cousteau died, back in 1997. He helped change a world where the sea was our sewer and life there was only worth the assets we could strain out of it. I wondered, who will fill his shoes? No one could take his place but lots of someones picked up his cause and we moved on. I felt the same loss when Ray Charles died, in 2004; two days after Ronald Reagan. In a climate of political fervor and national pride, Reagan’s passing overshadowed Ray Charles. But a decade later, Ronald Reagan is just another dead president whose performance and ideals have lost their luster. Ray’s music still lends comfort and courage to those in hard times. I knew we would get another politician but who would give me something to believe in? Nobody took his place but the music is still lifting us up. 

I know that nobody can fill the void left by Nelson Mandela and I feel the weight. But there will be others to  champion the poor and disenfranchised, and their journeys are just beginning. Decades from now, you will be able to pull up Angelou’s poem and it will touch hearts as it did today. I identify with Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Noble Laureate who said, “I write as much to understand as to be understood.” So I write down my little words and I read them again, to myself, and it’s alright. I am ready to move on.