I have spent two hours thumbing through books, searching folded pages and underlines, Googling around on love, loss, marriage, life– to find a proper “thought” for Sunday 9-11. It’s challenging. There’s so much grief in the stories we are hearing and telling again today, that I had to turn off the radio. I can’t stand it. I can’t find anything that fits the way I feel.
The other complication, is that today is my husband’s 60th birthday. We have been together since I was 19. We fell in love as kids, and we are grandparents now. This is the story of my life, a long happy marriage, and for that I am so grateful I wish I were a poet so I could explain it better. I’m so happy he is 60.
This is what I know: that when the towers were burning, when the planes were hijacked, all the cell phones were sending the same message: “I love you.” Love had the last word. And then there’s the horrible images of people falling from the tower, flying almost, they still make me cry– but that one story stays with me– the one of the couple holding hands. People saw them fall together. We don’t know who they were, but that’s what their last act was.
So what should we do?
Hold hands. Say I love you.
