Love's Labor Found

I do not know Rima Samman.  Yet I am blown away by her courage and by the depth of her love for her younger brother, Rami Samman. 

Rami Samman's birthday was January 25.  Had he lived to celebrate it, he would have had to blow out forty-one candles atop his cake.  Unfortunately, he did not live to see his forty-first birthday.  As seventeen-year-old, due to a benign brain tumor which, while it did not kill him, left him with permanent brain damage.  He not only essentially rebuilt his life from scratch, he thrived and became a beacon of hope for others. 

Rami Samman died on Mother's Day, May 10, 2020.  He is one of the more than half million Americans COVID-19 has killed since it announced its presence on our shores slightly more than one year ago.  To celebrate her brother's life and her ceaseless love for him, Rima Samman held a candlelight vigil on January 25, 2021, on the Third Avenue Beach in Belmar.  It was more than simply a celebration of his birthday.  It was his big sister's way of creating a moment of unity and coming together in her community, Belmar, for those who had lost a loved one to COVID-19.  That night, in spite of the cold, twenty other people joined her on the sand. 

In the six weeks since she created it, Rima Samman's tribute to Rami has grown from a single heart made of yellow seashells to nine such hearts. Inside of each heart are stones.  Each stone contains the name of someone COVID-19 has killed.  There are, now, roughly 1,800 stones.   As news of what Rima had created spread, she began receiving requests from people all over the world who had lost a loved one and who asked for him or her to be given a place on Rima's most special beach.  Weekly, she has faithfully returned to the Third Avenue Beach, adding the stones bearing the names of the fallen and honoring their memory. 

Tonight at 6:30 pm, one final (at least for present purposes) candlelight vigil shall be held on Belmar's Third Avenue Beach.  Rima hopes to find a permanent home for the memorial.  Summer is coming up fast and its hold on prime real estate on a Belmar beach will become, I would imagine, tenuous at best.  

Whether she finds a permanent home for it, what she has done for her brother, and for countless other people from whom COVID-19 has exacted a devastatingly personal price, is something that, to paraphrase a line from the Poet Laureate of the Jersey Shore, neither time nor memory shall ever fade away. 

-AK