Eulogy,
William Earnest Simpson
“A Doorway of of Grace & Light”
Delivered 13 December 2025 at St Agnes Church San Francisco
The Weight of Glory
When I heard of Bill’s passing, countless vignettes came to mind—and they continue to arrive, unbidden, like gentle visitations. Even today, on Through the Doorway of Light©
By Philip J. Eulie, MD the way to his funeral, a question pressed upon me: why did Bill and I become such close friends? What was it we shared that ignited our bond and sustained it across decades?
We were both sons of upstate New York. We walked the same university halls. We shared the same faith, and surely that helped. Yet I believe the deeper reason was this: neither Bill nor I were materialistic. Our treasures were never possessions; our treasures were people.
And as I look out over this gathering reflecting on that, a passage from a sermon by C. S. Lewis
came to mind — his famous message at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford, titled The Weight of Glory. Some of you may know it. In that sermon, Lewis reminds us that the truly immortal things in this world are not nations or cultures or universities — all of which will pass away. The immortal realities are the people sitting beside us.
If our faith is true, then each human life before us is on its way — slowly, mysteriously — to becoming what Lewis calls an “everlasting splendor.”
So when I look out at this assembly of friends, I see the treasures Bill cherished: men and women on their way to becoming everlasting splendors in the light of God.
It is a lovely thought, isn’t it?
Let us begin.
Memory—a Doorway
I am Dr. Philip Eulie. These vignettes, these memories held in faith become places where grace enters and heals — through which God steps into our wounded world.
In God’s economy, love is never wasted. That simple truth explains why remembering someone we love carries real weight, why grief and gratitude stand like twin sentinels over the soul, and why a life woven with ours refuses to come undone.
Yet before Bill’s story widens into its horizon, we should honor a grace that took flesh here near the end of his life — a grace expressed through the fidelity of friends.
Grace That Arrived Like Dawn
Pam, Tim and Alex, Eric, Marteen, Sarah, Carolyn, Rich and Caroline, Dan, and Tony — would you please rise?
In hospitals, I have seen patients discharge from the hospital and leave with promises of support. Neighbors pledge help. Friends say they will stop by. Good intentions bloom quickly, but daily burdens return like a tide. Many patients return requiring readmission because ordinary life overwhelms them.
But Bill did not return.
He did not, because you stayed.
You stayed, and love stayed.
You stayed, and grace stayed.
You cared for his loyal companion, Rango walking him twice daily. You drove Rango back and forth each day ensuring Bill could hold him each day, even in hospice. You quietly reshaped his apartment so his growing limitations would not diminish his dignity. You lifted his spirits when heaviness pressed in, brought meals, read to him, prayed with him when the veil between suffering and grace grew thin, and kept watch through difficult nights. You bore burdens we physicians can name but cannot mend.
No one drafted you into service. You simply stayed. You embodied what the Christian tradition calls the corporal works of mercy: love rendered visible, grace made flesh.
Others helped as well, and their stories deserve space later today.
A Threshold Contested
Bill’s life began with danger and grace intertwined. His birth unfolded like a contested threshold. He almost did not go on his life’s great adventure. In gratitude his parents entrusted their newborn son to God. That early dedication became the compass of his life.
Bill developed a keen sense for the divine. Marked by a holy restlessness — he roamed widely across the great terrain of grace. Where God whispered, Bill listened.
A Severe Season
I met Bill at SUNY Albany. He was a drama major flirting with opera, surrounded by a coterie of ingénues. I was a biology and chemistry major in a very different ecosystem — dissecting things instead of singing about them. Yet somehow, we found each other in a Christian fellowship where grace often arrived unannounced. And among us was Hubert, a doctoral student.
Ah, Hubert — brilliant, fragile, tender, disheveled, homeless, and with dental hygiene in ruins. He had just survived what you might call a “severe season.” A psychotic break had torn through his life. My suitemates, moved by a mercy beyond logic, invited him in one night — and never uninvited him. He simply stayed.
Our suite shared one bathroom. My toothbrush often turned up damp, like a shirt someone else
had borrowed. I suppressed my darkest thoughts until one early morning, when I opened the door and the steam slowly parted… and there…there stood Hubert — brushing with my toothbrush.”
I whispered, “Whose toothbrush is that?”
He shrugged.
Friends, I was undone.
I staggered back to my room and found Bill tuning his guitar. He looked up. “Phil… are you all right?”
Barely breathing, I managed, “Hubert has been using my toothbrush.”
Bill tried to hold compassion — for a heartbeat — and then it came: that great laugh we all loved and now miss, that deep, resonant laugh that shook the room and rolled down the hall like a liberated hymn.
When the laughter finally settled, something truer shimmered beneath it: Bill’s gift—laughter as sacrament.
After graduation, life dispersed us across divergent landscapes. And for a season, silence settled.
My Brother Bill
Years later, as I prepared to move to San Francisco — a city aching under the weight of the AIDS crisis — I called an old friend, Jim. I did not know Jim lived with Bill. When my name arose, Bill, feeling playful, said, “Next time you talk to him, tell him Hubert says hello… and he’s here with your toothbrush.”
When Jim relayed that line, I nearly dropped the phone. In that improbable sentence, our friendship rekindled and brotherhood restored.
The Grammar of Generosity
From that rekindling flowed a rhythm of friendship — a grammar of generosity. We shared meals and had long conversations. Whenever the check arrived, Bill offered the same quiet ritual: a soft smile, eyes lowered, almost contemplative — his gentle permission for me to pay.
But generosity around Bill never felt transactional. Paying never diminished you; it enlarged you.
His true gift was presence.
And in the end, with poetic symmetry, Bill died penniless, leaving it to friends to the work of
gathering the loose ends and picking up the tab. People often die as they live. Bill lived with hands open to give and to receive.
His Greatest Gladness
When Bill moved from Covenant Love Community in Upstate New York he set aside the world of opera. As a nurse in San Francisco during the AIDS crisis, Bill found the place where all true vocations emerge: Where his greatest gladness met the world’s deepest need. Where his great laughter and presence met the city’s long night.
Bill didn’t merely care for AIDS patients; he accompanied them. In his presence, God became quietly tangible — and in doing so, he felt God’s pleasure.
His gift — presence — became his vocation.
As Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “Christ plays in ten thousand places.”
Bill was one of those places — a human aperture through which grace entered the world.
The Gift of Life
But even gladness was tempered by suffering. Diabetes gnawed at him over many years.
Eventually his kidneys failed. Without suitable family donors, the transplant team suggested he ask his friends.
He brushed it off: “I can’t go around mooching organs.”
Yet when he finally reached out, four friends stepped forward — four men willing to place their bodies in the breach. In the end, it was Rich Arnold — a friend from Bill’s opera days — who became the donor.
Two beds side by side. One incision, two lives joined.
From that day on, Bill carried Rich’s generosity like a quiet anthem — a reminder that grace is never abstract. Grace is a person who shows up.
Eternal Laughter
Two months ago, that great laugh fell silent. Yet those who knew Bill sensed it was never meant to remain confined to this world. Bill’s laughter has not vanished. It has crossed a threshold and risen into a fuller register. Nothing in the created order has the tensile strength to tear us from the Love that roared forth from the empty tomb. And because of that unyielding strength, we can say with confidence: Bill has not slipped into shadow. He is where God is whispering, resting in God’s laughter and God’s great gladness.
A Final Imagination
Every life moves from promise to fulfillment, from half-light into full brightness—as did Bill’s. As I ponder Bill’s death, I imagine my own. I see a corridor woven from memory and mercy. Light opens. Forgiveness softens the ground.
Then a voice — Bill’s voice, whole and joyful — says, “You are home.”
I see him radiant, laughing again — and in that joy, eternity breaks gently into view.
As I said, in God’s economy nothing is wasted — not even laughter. Comedy too is taken up into resurrection — redeemed, transfigured, made eternal.
And so, in that redeeming light, there stands beside Bill a tall, immaculate figure — resplendent, luminous — arm extended toward me, in resurrected form. And in his hand… a brand-new toothbrush…And Hubert
I am undone.
And somewhere beyond the veil, that laugh rises — uncontained — rolling across eternity.
And in the sound and the silence that follow, eternity feels like home.
Ten Thousand Places
When I look back across my life, I see how diminished it might have been without Bill’s presence.
Bill became a steadying light in the long night, a seam of brightness in the fabric of my days — a doorway of joy and grace.
He offered counsel, friendship, and a way of seeing the world that enlarged everyone around him — including me.
If Christ truly “plays in ten thousand places,” then Bill’s presence was surely one — a quiet aperture through which grace passed into the world.
He taught me, without argument or strategy, that Christ is never merely an idea; Christ is a presence. Christ is a face seen in the eyes of a friend — a doorway of light through which grace enters.
This is the gospel Bill lived — the gospel of presence, mercy, and self-giving love. — Amen.
Through the Doorway of Light©
By Philip J. Eulie, MD
When laughter leaves a silent place,
And joy has taken wing,
I think of Bill’s bright, patient face
And every gentle thing.
He walked the dusk, he walked the dawn,
Where grief and mercy meet;
A steady lamp, a shelter drawn
For weary, wandering feet.
He listened where the Spirit stirred,
In silence soft and deep;
He heard God’s whisper like a bird
That wakes the dawn from sleep.
His laughter lifted shame and fear
As sunlight lifts the rain;
A healing tide, it gathered near
And made us whole again.
Through suffering’s long, uncharted night—
Through trial, loss, and ache—
He held his flame against the fright,
And love burned in its wake.
Now heaven’s threshold, bright and fair,
Has opened wide for him;
We glimpse his presence in the air,
In light on morning’s rim.
O Christ who plays in every place,
Receive him in Your sight;
And lead us also by Your grace
Through every doorway—into Light.
©Philip J. Eulie, MD Copyright all rights reserved