‘The Reflection Pool’

Every year on Sept. 11 in Battery Park City, New York, blue tribute lights are lit up 4,000 feet into the sky to represent the towers that once stood tall.

One evening, Brian and Cyndi were walking by the lights and a group of young ladies nearby wanted to take a picture in front of the blue lights.

They asked Brian to take their picture.

“Are you (expletive) kidding me? No!”

The ladies were taken back by his response, and their reaction turned into anger.

“You know, we were affected by this too,” one lady snarls back.

“Really?” He sarcastically continues, “Well I was on the 78th floor. Impact one. You weren’t affected.”

The young women stared wide-eyed into his, like deer caught in headlights.

“People don’t respect this sacred ground and meaning,” Brian states.

When Brian and Cyndi took me to the 9/11 museum, we stopped by one of the two reflection pools to see Steve’s name engraved in it.

As we silently stood there, and I let my fingers caress the engraved letters making up his full name, I heard Cyndi angrily speak up.

“Can you please take your child off this ledge? This is a gravesite for the people lost.”

The woman took her child off and agitatedly answered back.

“You don’t have to be rude about it,” she snarls.

Brian jumped in, “She isn’t being rude, but this is a gravesite and you need to respect that. I am a survivor of Sept. 11, and I knew some of these people. Please respect that.”

The woman looked at him in fear and astonishment. She hurried away.

“People don’t understand the meaning of ‘Reflection Pool’. This is the only gravesite they can come to in memory of their loved one(s),” Cyndi said to me.

I stared into it, my mind uncertain. I could not comprehend such a thought.