Gone

We took one last trip with the grandkids this summer to Liberty State Park, spending most of our time at the Liberty Science museum, picnicking in the shade trees, ferrying across the Hudson River to Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty, and ending with a hushed walk through Empty Sky. Empty Sky, New Jersey’s memorial to the victims of the 9-11 massacre, consists of two parallel walls, about thirty feet high, with the names of the more than 700 New Jersey residents etched forever in its stone. The parallel walls are situated so that the visitors’ view is directed across the river toward Ground Zero. We strolled through those walls, touched the names, and tried to remember or imagine the events of that fateful day (the oldest kids were not born until later that year). The activity proved to be a solemn ending to what had been a really fun excursion. 

Eleven years after the 9-11 attack, the event has joined others that are forever engraved in my memory – the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King; the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle; the Columbine High School massacre - events that left me diminished because of our collective loss.

But the loss was more than a "collective" one to many people. It was personal, and frightening, and lonely, and empty. In her memoir, Where You Left Me, Jennifer Gardner Trulson writes of the vacuum left by the 9-11 attack: 

“Gone. That simple word can be so benign...when someone leaves a room, he’s gone; when

your toddler eats her carrots, they’re all gone. Doug [her husband] went to work and was

gone in the usual way. Until he wasn’t. Until that gone became something else entirely, just 

a few hours later. Gone became ‘vanished’, ‘lost’, ‘evaporated’. It was the worst gone that

I’d ever known...”*

To survivors, family members, first responders, members of the military, cab drivers, medical personnel, police officers... Thank you for your service and your sacrifice. We will NEVER forget.

Max

                                                                                                                                               

*Where You Left Me © 2011 by Jennifer Gardner Trulson.,

pub. Gallery Books, Div. of Simon & Schuster, Inc.