Time of solace, not revenge

Four days before Christmas in 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded 31,000 feet above Scotland.

One of the singular cruelties of that act of terrorism, which killed 243 passengers, 16 crew, and 11 people on the ground, is that it happened as so many of them, including dozens of college kids, were flying home to the United States to spend the holidays with their families. In an instant, a normally joyous time of year was forever transformed into an annual reminder of ineffable loss.

Every year, as other families prepare for a festive season, families of those murdered by the Libyan government steel themselves for Dec. 21, the day Flight 103 was blown out of the sky. Of those killed, 190 were Americans. The dead hailed from 21 countries. That pain stretches far and wide.

As this Dec. 21 approached, a gift in the form of a small measure of justice arrived early, as the former Libyan intelligence agent who is accused of preparing the bomb appeared in a Washington, D.C., courtroom on Monday.

Just before news of the accused bomb maker being in US custody broke, Elizabeth and Erv Philipps got an e-mail from Scottish authorities informing them of the arrest.

“I can’t say enough about the FBI and the Scottish police,” Elizabeth Philipps said. “They are relentless.”

Elizabeth Philipps said the bomb maker being held accountable does nothing to heal the hole that is the loss of her daughter Sarah. A student at the University of Colorado, Sarah, 20, had spent a semester in London with a Syracuse University study-abroad program and was flying home to spend Christmas with her family in Newton.

“It doesn’t cure anything,” Elizabeth Philipps said of the arrest. “You want her back. You want the wedding, the grandchildren. There’s no such thing as closure. When I die, that will be closure.”

When she learned of the arrest, she said, “I was sad and angry, on the brink of tears.”

And then something happened, something that has often happened whenever she felt overwhelmed by the loss of her daughter: She began hearing from friends and family.

Someone she worked with 35 years ago sent a message of support.

“A friend called from Mexico, where she was on vacation,” she said.

It led her to remember acts of kindness over the years: the boy who was a student at Newton North High School with Sarah, showing up at the Philipps house on a bicycle in the rain with a cake after Sarah was killed. That boy, now a man, lights a candle every year at the bench in a Newton Center playground that memorializes Sarah, Elizabeth Philipps said.

“We served the cake after Sarah’s memorial service,” she said.

Elizabeth Philipps also found kindness and compassion when she traveled to Scotland to find where Sarah fell to earth. She became close to families in Lockerbie who lost loved ones or tended to the dead. Sarah is buried there.

On Wednesday, Elizabeth Philipps wrote a Christmas card to Jim Wilson, the husband of June Wilson, on whose farm near Lockerbie bodies and wreckage rained down 34 years ago. June Wilson died last year.

“June was such a warm, thoughtful, and stalwart friend,” Elizabeth Philipps said. “I’ll never forget her.”

Knowing so many haven’t, and won’t ever, forget Sarah helps, too. It helps more than knowing the bomb maker will probably spend the rest of his life in prison.

Revenge is not an emotion Elizabeth Philipps feels. Instead, she finds solace knowing there are three girls named after Sarah, daughters of Sarah’s friends and family.

“That helps restore the balance of Sarahs in the world,” she said.

She takes comfort knowing some 70 students have studied in the UK and Ireland in a study-abroad program that memorializes Sarah.

And she perseveres not by thinking of the men who killed Sarah or their dark motives, but of the light that was her daughter.

“She loved Christmas, and she was coming home,” Elizabeth Philipps said. “She was the brightest light in any room.”