In a Lithuanian cemetery, a world away from ground zero, the twin towers still stand. Vladimir Gavriushin lays white roses near the 6-foot granite replicas of the World Trade Center’s skyscrapers, a memorial he built to honor his daughter Yelena, one of the nearly 3,000 people killed on Sept. 11.
Gavriushin has buried rocks from ground zero under these tombstone towers, far from the place Yelena died — a place he can no longer afford to visit. And so, as the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks approaches, he mourns for Yelena here, at his own ground zero.
He remembers frantically calling his daughter that day amid the terrified crowds in Brooklyn, where he was at the time: “She never answered.”
Sept. 11 sent waves of grief far beyond America, as people from London to New Zealand learned their loved ones were among the dead. But though the pain transcended borders, foreign families have battled to cope with their loss from afar.
For some, it was impossible to make healing pilgrimages to the site of the tragedy, or to grieve alongside a community that understood their pain. For others, the larger struggle lies within the symbolism of Sept. 11 itself — a day that,
Read More from the Article Source: Full Article
