How we mourn Maro.
How sad that the ranks of our elders are thinning above us. We mourn the magnificent Hamo, the clear-headed and courageous Vahagn, Hrach with his radiant soul, princely Sero, Emin. And Maro, Maro, mother hen Maro: over us, her chicks, she became an eagle. Like Sister Manush in the fairy tale, she took her orphaned brother by the hand and set out in those distant, storybook days of our mothers. On that road through a fairy-tale life, her girl’s step would always be ahead of her brother’s; when danger came, she would spread her wings over him, because she was the girl, because she was not a girl but a mother, because that was how it was ordained.
In her soul, the soul of a poet and a girl, a thought took shape: that she and they, she and all of us, were moulded not from clay but from the stardust of heaven. That girl and poet made of stardust could deny the clay in herself and in us, and see her earthly path and ours as a heavenly one. Always a little ahead of us, she spread the wings of a sister, a girl, a mother hen over us in the face of danger, even before danger came—even if we were neither orphans nor brothers, even if we were ten times stronger than she was, even if we had not been made of stardust at all but moulded from heavy, dense clay that could never be shaken off.
How we mourn Maro. Those weary wings were not the ones that should have folded at the head of our procession today, the procession of earthly beings thirsting for tolerance and love. That strong, courageous spirit was not the one that should have faded among us.
And in each of us and in all of us, for as long as we live, may that girl of the distant roads live on, feel concern and rise to heroism: the girl who set out holding her brother’s hand. For we truly are all brothers, and we all long for the shelter of her wings.