Rowana Abbensetts-Dobson

“Several years before Maya [Angelou] went home to heaven, she penned the poem popularly known as 'When Great Trees Fall,' but properly titled 'Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, and Mayfield,' a lyrical ode she ends this way:

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly....

Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

Her sentiments, so often repeated, powerfully sum up what loss does to the human heart, how it lowers our heads and deepens our sorrows, and yet how, in the end, it miraculously restores us. When great trees fall, we weep in unity with the forest--and we rejoice at the legacy that lingers.”
― Cicely Tyson, Just as I Am