Mayor Reflects On 'Grief That Has No Half-Life' At South Brunswick 9/11 Ceremony

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, NJ — South Brunswick Mayor Charlie Carley delivered remarks Sept. 11 at the township's 25th annual Sept. 11 remembrance ceremony, held at 11 a.m. at the Remembrance Fountain at the South Brunswick Municipal Building.

The fountain, designed by Amado Batour, was dedicated by the township in 2005.

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Four South Brunswick-area residents died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: Jeffrey Robinson and Kenneth Ledee of South Brunswick, Mukul Agarwal of Kendall Park, and Toyena Skinner of Kingston, all of whom worked at the World Trade Center.

"It's been long enough that many of the young people standing with us this morning were not yet born," Carley said. "Long enough that a child who lost a parent that morning may now hold a child of her own. Long enough that we might expect the edges of that morning to have softened. They have not. They do not. They will not. Some mornings do not fade. Some mornings wait for September."

Carley explained why the ceremony is held beside the fountain, describing two kinds of memory: the historical record, and a more personal memory that "arrives unbidden" with the sights and smells of early September.

"I used to remember autumn by that long-ago smell of burning leaves in the street," Carley said. "Now, this time of year, every year, memory envelops me with the acrid smoke of that day, which we all smelled."

He said grief "has no half-life" and "only changes shape and endures as a void within us," comparing it to the fountain's continuously falling water.

"What we have lost keeps falling, keeps moving, and we keep returning to stand beside it," Carley said. "The water is never the same water. The loss is always the same loss."

Carley called South Brunswick's victims "our people," and referenced the missing-person flyers posted throughout lower Manhattan in the days after the attacks, calling them acts of love.

He praised the courage of first responders who "climbed those endless stairs" of the World Trade Center towers, and closed by asking residents to carry the memory of the day forward for future generations.

"We remember. We remember," Carley said. "May God bless the souls of our neighbors and of every innocent taken from us that day. May He comfort those who love them still."

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