In Memoriam, 2023

Everybody knows whenever rain appears, it’s really angel tears.
How long must they cry? Let the sun shine through…

The Sky Belongs To Dreamers

Bury his heart, but not his love.

A Simple Prayer

Time To Say Goodbye

“America Dream: Andrea Bocelli’s Statue of Liberty Concert” was held under the stars on July 5, 2000. His duet with Sarah Brightman — Twin Towers gleaming in the skyline — captures much that, after September 11, 2001, cannot be put into words.

The Twin Towers As They Were — ABC Nightline — September 10, 2002

Western Buddhas

In 2006, we sent out the attached piece as an op-ed. When there were no takers, we didn’t post it, in case we might try sending it out again one day. We’re including it here because the Towers represented a whole world that was lost that day — a world that was beloved by the victims and all of us who were left behind.

“Dirge Without Music”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go: but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains – but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Since 2005, we have included “Dirge Without Music” on our yearly memorial page because it conveys the enormous personal loss of September 11, 2001. At the Yankee Stadium Prayer Vigil on September 23rd, before the final death toll was even known, Rabbi Marc Gellman put that grief into words this way:

Some Links We Love from Earlier Memorial Pages

America, the Beautiful

New York State of Mind

Danny Boy

Never Forget

There’s A Hole in the World

Clydesdales’ Super Bowl Tribute Tribute

We All Stand Tall

In Memoriam Sept 11 Facebook Page

The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center Facebook Page

World Trade Center Remember Facebook Page

Click here for the story behind the “Angel of Grief Weeping Over the Dismantled Altar of Life.”

Click here for the transcript of the Prayer Vigil at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001.