September 11, 2013

Remember. 

This word resonates in my mind over and over so many times it loses its meaning. 

Remember. Remember. Remember

To put back together, to collect, to coalesce…

Remember.

I remember my mother and the way she laughed when I was being mischievous, a small chuckle, the lift of an eyebrow. 

I remember a girl who shared her limeade with me at lunch and told funny stories. She rode bikes with me to the Quik-Stop on Saturdays where we bought candy which we ate throughout the rest of the day, riding our bikes across the footbridge stopping in the middle just as a train went thundering by underneath us. We would lean against the railing as the wind whipped through our hair. I was nine.

 

I remember my Grandfather’s tattoo he got while in the navy, an original biker bad-a&&, had a faded red heart with a sword through it. I remember him playing crazy-eights with me. I was ten.

I remember a boy, who called me “Wonder Years.” I remember my mother holding me while I cried after I learned that he'd died. The first boy who ever noticed me and thought I was special. I remember my sapphire ring, sparkling and shiny. I remember how the boy took it and tried to put it on a finger and it sat like a small crown at the very top. I remember losing that ring and with it, a tangible connection to the boy. I was fourteen. 

 

I remember a day where so few words were spoken because there were none to say. I remember the simple silence that connected us all on a still, beautiful, blue and cloudless, sunny, September day; a day that had no right to be so perfect, unless it knew somehow that it was to be the last perfect day; the perfect day, separating before and after. A nation shattered into so many pieces. I was twenty-four.

Remember. Remember. Remember.

We put our pieces back together, one small memory-shard at a time. It will never be the entire image, the entirety of a person’s life, more like a mosaic, many pieces making up the whole; a broken and beautiful mosaic of what was and what is; the beauty of strength and courage, the beauty of resilience, the beauty of community, and the healing power of love.