Do you recognize these names, with their ages and home cities?
Andrew Marshall King, 42, Princeton, NJ; Robert King, 36, Bellerose Terrace, NY;
Lucille T. King, 59, Ridgewood, NJ; Lisa M. King-Johnson34, New York, NY;
Takashi Kinoshita, 46, Rye, NY; Chris Michael Kirby, 21, New York, NY;
Howard (Barry) Kirschbaum, 53, New York, NY
Not much to go by, right? I cried today thinking about them, wishing I could reach out to their families. You see, they are listed on an eighteen-year-old slip of white paper still tucked in my Bible. Their names and spirits have lived with me for a long time. In the relative privacy of my car—my island in a stream of rushing traffic - I steered my way home, grieving that our earthly relationships are fragile. Delicate and intricate as lace. Easily torn apart.
If you are between 25 and 100 years old, you probably remember minute details of your day on September 11, 2001. Some of you may have huddled in silence watching the t.v. in my technical theatre class, round-eyed, mouths agape at the mass murder of nearly 3,000 people. My distraught daughters, both young adults, but teary, voices pitched high, called my classroom in the middle of it all. My son wanted to enlist immediately to chase down the enemy. If you are middle-aged, no doubt you can tell me where you were that morning, what caught your breath and shook the very marrow of your bones, as you worked, traveled, or moved about your home. We “seniors” remember it the way we recall vivid details of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, carrying among others “the first teacher in space.” Perhaps, like me, you still feel a chill from scalp to sole, when you talk about the day “the Twin Towers came down.”
Fortunately, only a few global events in our lives sear themselves into our memories like scars of deep stab wounds. I had no friends in the rubble of the World Trade Center, nor on Flight 93, shattered near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. My husband and I knew people working at the Pentagon, and for twenty-four hours, we ached to hear of their safety. In a world of mobile phones, silence screams.
A few days after September 11, our church held a memorial service. We split up names of those who perished that day and lifted them aloud in prayer. I cannot bear to throw away the paper with the names of the seven souls listed above. They are not statistics. They were people who got up on that beautiful fall morning, maybe kissed spouses or parents or children goodbye, and went to work, boarded a plane, or ran up the stairs of a burning tower trying to save a fellow human being. Their families mourn still, especially, as we all do, on anniversaries. I have no words to comfort them. But I would like to tell them I still remember.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Matt. 5:4,9 ESV
