If you live life in the right way, then death, however inevitable it may be, need not be seen as a defeat. Those that follow in the footsteps you created will continue to lead others in the right direction.
That's the case with two women I definitely regard as heroines of mine, and I think that all of us should treat them that way: Edie Windsor, and Joyce Matz. They were heroines on behalf of very different causes: marriage equality, and historic preservation. For the record, and for whatever else it's worth otherwise, I'm a proponent of both. But, even if you're not a proponent of either, I still think that there are lessons that you and I--indeed, all of us--can learn from the lives these two amazing women lived.
It's probably fair to say that, of the two of them, Edie had what might have seemed like the more hopeless of the two causes. As recently as the 2004 presidential election, marriage equality appeared to be an issue that favored the side of those who opposed it, perhaps for generations to come. That thought was heartbreaking to many, as it should have been. But none of this stopped Edie. Not even the death of Thea Spyer, her spouse, and the health problems she faced in mourning her death, could stop her from fighting for legal recognition of the life and love that the two of them shared. A fight that she and her attorneys won, against greater odds than I can calculate. And, though it was certainly a victory for LGBT rights in general, it was, as all such victories are, a victory for all of us. Every time our society expands the reach of freedom and fairness for some, it ultimately does so for all of us.
Historic preservation is perhaps not as politically challenging a goal as marriage equality. Who's against history, you might ask? Well, real estate developers, among others. Especially in New York, the city that got its start with what is still perhaps the biggest real estate swindle in history. New York is a city that, even now, is filled with history almost everywhere you look. But none of that is an accident. Indeed, it took the destruction of the old Pennsylvania Station, a loss everyone now laments but was not lamented enough at the time it happened, to get people to understand that history is a gift that has to be consciously cherished in order for it to endure. Like Edie, Joyce did not face an easy road. But that never stopped her from walking it. As the Times article points out, she walked it right up to the end, even though she needed a walker to do it.
Edie and Joyce's lives, individually and together, tell us that life's greatest accomplishments belong to those who do not chose easy paths, and who do not abandon them no matter how difficult those paths get. And, if they walk far enough down those paths, they help to point the way for the rest of us.
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