The Power of Remembering

Dear Friends,  

During this last week, our media has been full of remembrances of 9/11 – the stories of victims, heroes, hero-victims. We remembered, we prayed and rededicated ourselves to the sacredness of life. 

I want to add still one more story from a distant land. Ireland. In October 2019, I was part of a group of tourists travelling with Father Joe McCaffrey and friends from Nativity Church, Brockport, NY. Michael, the driver of our coach for that whole week, took us one day to a place that was not on the itinerary. 

Up we went, driving on a country road high above Kinsale Harbor, above the waters where the Lusitania had been sunk in 1915. Michael told us the story of the Garden of Remembrance we were about to enter. 

A local woman named Kathleen Murphy had spent 30 years as a nurse in a New York City Hospital. She had also gotten to know Father Michael Judge, the Franciscan chaplain of a firefighters’ station in the city. Many of the wounded, including Father Judge, were brought to the hospital from the Twin Towers. Kathleen was among the dedicated staff who did all they could for the dying and those who would recover. 

Later, Kathleen, herself suffering with cancer, went home to Ireland. She had inherited a parcel of land which she wanted to turn into a remembrance garden for the 343 first responders who had perished on 9/11. Neighbors, family, friends, strangers from across Ireland and beyond, came to help. Three-hundred-forty-three trees were planted, each one dedicated to a particular fallen hero. We walked in silence through the gates into the garden. An appropriate drizzle had begun. Family and friends of the men memorialized there had come since the garden was completed in 2010. They bore and left here photos, dog tags, letters of love, other memorabilia, prayers. (Go back to the photos above.)  

Kathleen Murphy was not at the dedication on September 10, 2011. She had died and now was also memorialized in this garden, so far from New York. 

Later, we who had been there, spoke of the power of remembering and the deep connections between our nations because of the compassion of Kathleen Murphy.  

For all the deliberate destruction terrorists inflict, the tender mercy of God, holding the suffering close, becomes evident in people like Kathleen Murphy. Thank You, Lord, for her and for all whose caring is greater than death. 

~Sister Joan Sobala