I don’t know why it is we wait to write about profound individuals who have impacted the very core of society and made tectonic shifts in the bedrock of culture until they are gone. Not that Maya Angelou was not written about during her impactful lifetime. She was. A LOT. So perhaps it is more a question of the writer (me) who waits too long to put praise on paper (although I have used her quotes more than any other writer, performer, polarizing figure, or great thinker of our time).

The great thing about Angelou is that she would likely agree to herself as being none of those things. Humility is another onerous traits of those who change world thinking. In truth, there aren’t enough proper adjectives to describe the woman herself and neither are there enough adverbs to put proper perspective on the stoicism and vigor with which she acted out, wrote, spoke, and changed worlds.

I, myself, am without words, hearing about her passing. With so many incompetent, self-centered, irascible, ego-driven money-worshiping people in this world—people in high places, with the ability to do great things, if they truly were to strive for it—we wish the Maya Angelous of the world could live forever. And when they pass, a part of our future dies with them—the vacuum they leave behind; a vacuum of compassion, necessary outspokenness, wisdom, love, and generosity. This vacuum will not fill itself and, worse, risks being filled with the self-promotional blowhards of our day.

I challenge all, in her honor, to help fill that vacuum with the ideals, actions, foresight, generosity, and humbleness that she would have continued herself.

Maya Angelou, like so many of the saint-like hearts and souls before her, also leaves behind an intangible to which we must all cling: a legacy of immeasurable hope. When people like her refuse to give up or give in, it is because they, too, believe there is still hope for us all.

Perhaps my favorite quote of hers (as if a person could pick just one) has to do with one of my own strongest beliefs: that we should all be treating each other with love, kindness, assistance, and the respect that we would hope for ourselves:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I will finish with the beginning of a favorite Angelou poem, Still I Rise, that so succinctly sums up her relentlessness toward what is right that I will always think of it when I think of her:

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

I shall never trod on you, Ms. Angelou, with any form of lies, but I suggest just the same, and with renewed vigor and hope, your spirit again and again shall rise.