Elizabeth Anania Edwards died on New Year’s Day in the new Lunar Hijri calendar of 1432. That first day in the month of Muharram, where it is forbidden to fight, she stopped and gave up her life to a disease. Though most in the US don’t use the word or embrace the context, she could have been considered a martyr, to the cause of ending breast cancer.
We in the United States often wear blinders when it comes to looking beyond our boundaries, but her death was noted outside our confines. Pakistan Times carried THIS.
I found myself wondering at the complexity of translation from English to Arabic that must have occurred, and fascinated by the resulting translation back to English in the Pakistan Times, I nevertheless recognize the syntax of the press release found in many other publications. It’s a reminder to me that the world really does listen, engage and even honor those it finds worthy.
In looking at the day in Wikipedia, it seems in a mystical sense, all of a piece that her death day was also that of the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor Bombing, the day Indonesia invaded East Timor, the day Yassar Arafat acknowledged Israel, the Day the Republic of China moved to Taipei and the day the US first executed a person by lethal injection. Days of tribulation and days of human rights achievements are always linked.
Anania studied law, then, spent her life helping others, struggling for their rights in bankruptcy court and family law. She went to Washington and told our government how the dysfunction of our health system and bankruptcy laws did more than anything in our country to break people financially and kill them. Anania spoke out for the human rights of others. Maybe there were other reasons, but she did not take the name of Edwards until and in honor of her son’s death in 1996. In another time she would probably have held the stage herself, rather than as a Senator’s wife. A daughter of the 70’s promise of human rights, her life was too short, but she strove to make it worthy. I think she succeeded.
Her death day folds into this week’s UN celebration: International Human rights Day, where this year’s recognition is for those defenders to end human discrimination. To recognize her is to understand the honorable struggle ongoing in the world.
So, it will be sad and pathetic it will be when these people show up at her funeral tomorrow. My pity is for them. If you wish to send an honorarium you might send to the Komen Fund in South Florida, (At the bottom of the Examiner page.) or the Wade Edwards Foundation. It’s all of a piece.
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