An Obituary For Someone I've Never Met

It's a very strange thing, to be introduced to someone once they're already gone.  I guess it's only fitting that, in this technological day and age, one of the only places left for a person to exist once he or she has passed away is somewhere on the internet.  Kind of like an empty apartment with a single photograph that had been left behind by the previous tenant, or the faded hand print of a child in cement whose name is no longer legible.  This has happened to me on more than one occasion. One minute you're browsing through a friend's Facebook profile, and the next, you're noticing a link to a memorial group for a young girl you've never met or a soldier from a small town in Kansas who died in the name of his country. I don't know about the rest of you, but sometimes when that happens, I get a pit in my stomach like I've lost someone myself. 

I was browsing through my friend's photo album the other day that documented her weekend trip to New York City earlier this summer.  I'm clicking and I'm clicking and all of a sudden there's a photo of a bench with a plaque on the back. 

DEREK O. SWORD

November 30, 1971 - September 11, 2001

To the world you were just one person, but to me you were the world.

I actually got teary-eyed.  I found myself wondering who this person was, and who was it that had tried to heal by engraving a piece of metal in a park in New York City?  So I Googled it and discovered that this man was killed in the second World Trade Center in the terrorist attacks on September 11.  He left behind his parents, who lived in Scotland (his homeland) and a fiance, Maureen Sullivan.  The comments people left on his remembrance page were inspiring to read.  There were even some written by strangers who had taken a seat on his bench and wondered who he had been. There was also a comment left by someone he and his fiance met while traveling around Scotland just 10 days before the attacks, where they were celebrating their engagement.  The commenter spoke of how, years later, the wounds of losing so many people in those attacks still stings.  And how in spite of such a brief interaction with this Derek Sword, she and her husband still felt a void that his death had left behind.  

That got me to thinking about all the other people who were lost that day, and it's pretty overwhelming knowing that in a few days, it will have been ten years.  If someone who met this man on a whim was still affected by his life, and death, years later, then I have to imagine that there are a lot of little holes in the souls of people all over the world.  From what happened on September 11, and the less newsworthy losses that other people experience each day.  It makes me wonder what it takes to heal.  How you could possibly manage to pick yourself up and keep going when a piece of you gets ripped out without warning.  

It has always been a marvel to me that the world manages to keep on spinning with some of the hurt that so many people endure.  You'd think you'd be able to see cracks and crumbles somehow.  From what I can tell, people heal in all sorts of ways.  Most of their actions are driven by the intent that the world never forgets that their loved one was here.  They organize walks and runs to raise money for causes.  They hammer wooden crosses on the side of the highway and leave flowers every 365 days as a promise to not forget.  Or they dedicate a bench in the middle of a beautiful park to the most important person in their world, hoping that someone will come along and realize that such a wonderful person existed.  But I think it's those little things that keep people moving forward, because that way, even if it's just for a moment, somebody somewhere will know that such a person was here, and that they were loved.

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