For Death is Not the End

 

For the past six weeks or so,  I have devoted this space to sharing stories of men and women killed twenty years ago on September 11, 2001.  The purpose of the exercise is simply this:  I am compelled to do my part to keep alive the memory of those souls by not simply marking the day on which they died but by highlighting a part (admittedly a very small part) of the days they lived leading up to that day.  I am also compelled to do it because I believe fervently in the correctness of Clarence's declaration to George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life

I try to remain ever mindful of the fact that the murder of those innocents on September 11, 2001 affected not merely the life of each one killed but, much like a flat stone skipped across a lake's surface leaving as evidence of its existence an ever-widening array of concentric circles, the lives of those they loved and those who loved them most of all.  Unlike the circles, which disappear and become one again with the lake's surface mere seconds after their creation, the hole left in each such life is permanent and incapable of ever being fully filled.  Those of us fortunate enough to have been personally unaffected by that day's events (I include myself among that number) can never relieve those who were of the burden of their grief.  Maybe, just maybe, by speaking of their loved ones, and the life each lived, rather than the death each died, we can lighten their load for just a day.  Or an hour.  Or a minute.  And if we possess that ability, then why would we not use it?  

Enjoy your Thursday.  However, wherever, and with whomever you spend it... 

...I'll remember you, my friend.  

-AK