FLATLANDS — More than 100 mourners packed into a Brooklyn church Thursday to remember 23-year-old Lauren Abraham, who was electrocuted by a downed wire while trying to capture footage of Hurricane Sandy.
During a tear-filled, two-hour service at the Christian Cultural Center, friends and relatives remembered Abraham as a passionate, ambitious woman who wanted to be both a teacher and a makeup artist.
“Most of us are either smart or creative,” her brother, Corey Abraham, said at the service. “She was fortunate enough to be both.”
Neighbors said they watched in horror as Lauren Abraham roamed barefoot in front of her South Richmond Hill home at the height of the storm Oct. 29 and shot images on her iPhone before slipping and falling on a power line knocked down by wind gusts.
Abraham’s grief-stricken mother told DNAinfo.com New York Thursday that her daughter had been concerned that the wires were posing a fire hazard.
“My neighbor told me that she thought the house was on fire, and she wanted to check to make sure everything was OK,” Kim Abraham said. “I’m just glad it was instant. [Coroners] told me she probably didn’t suffer for very long, and I can take some comfort in knowing that.”
Relatives said Lauren Abraham had enrolled in LaGuardia Community College but had put her education on hold to pursue another passion: cosmetology.
“Her talent as a makeup artist was something that you couldn’t overlook,” said Ernst Alvarez Jr., Abraham’s boyfriend, who said one of the last memories they shared was creating spooky face makeup designs for Halloween. “She was just one of those people who once she was in the zone, you couldn’t slow her down.”
But Abraham’s mother said she was planning on ultimately planning on becoming a mathematics professor like her idol and stepfather, who died in 2009.
Relatives described Abraham as devoutly religious and said she constantly nagged them to go to the non-denominational Christian church where her service was held.
The service included gospel songs performed by members of the church parish, along with poetry readings by Abraham's friends and relatives.
"You're with me every day," Abraham's cousin said in a poem she wrote called "Farewell." "Though we have to say farewell, Lauren, this is not the end."
