Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim by Scottoline Lisa & Serritella Francesca

Author:Scottoline, Lisa & Serritella, Francesca [Scottoline, Lisa & Serritella, Francesca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Essays, Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Biography, Parenting, Humour, Humor, Retail
ISBN: 9781250025074
Google: b21UFnsFODwC
Amazon: 1250025079
Barnesnoble: 1250025079
Goodreads: 13722232
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2012-11-01T07:00:00+00:00

Tribute in Light, September 11, 2011

Loss cannot be shared, but grief can.

So when my friend Courtney invited me to see the Tribute in Light with her later that evening, I wanted to go.

Courtney is one of my dearest friends from home, we’ve known each other since sixth grade. Today, she works for the architectural lighting firm that designed and constructed this memorial light installation. Its twin pillars of light echo the footprint of the Twin Towers, they reach four miles into the sky and are visible from sixty miles away. Courtney had spent every night last week standing at different points in Manhattan and New Jersey with a walkie-talkie, helping to make sure each of the eighty-eight 7,000-watt lightbulbs was perfectly aligned for the tenth anniversary of September Eleventh.

In fact, I was with Courtney ten years ago, when the attacks first happened. I was sitting behind her in our tenth-grade chemistry class when a teacher rushed in and turned on the TV above the blackboard. I remember Courtney’s head tilted back and her shiny black ponytail touched my desk. Her pretty hair on my notepad was the last ordinary thing I saw that day. By the time my eyes followed hers to the television, the world had changed.

Now ten years later, I stand beside her at the foot of a memorial she helped create. I knew then that I could write about it. Even two kids from Pennsylvania, like my friend from San Francisco in the choir, could participate in this memory. We are a part of this now. We are a part of its light, and its voice, and its song.

That’s the thing about grief; it makes room—the room to be close to someone you’ve never met, and to mourn someone you never knew. Grief is a conduit—for love, for compassion, for healing, and for grace.

Time has not diminished the loss. We will never forget. But more will come to remember. Our collective memory burns brighter than ever before, and so united, we can send the rain back up in light.

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