Remembrance & Reflections

Tuesday.

Ten years ago.

Seconds passed with a painful slowness as we helplessly watched the images unfold before us.

Steel and concrete gave way.

Heroes were lost.

Our hearts were rent in two.

Communities gathered.

Prayers were raised.

Then a decade passed in a flash.

Thousands dead. Two wars. A great recession.

Each time the footage rolls and the second plane is brought to bear, I find myself hoping, praying, almost convinced that this time it will miss. That the pilot might suddenly understand the consequences of this folly and alter course. That the passengers might suddenly take control of the aircraft, that somehow a miraculous intervention might occur and thousands will be spared. 

But alas.

This year, we watched the footage as a family. The older kids are eight and nine, old enough to understand what transpired. Old enough to know of the events which mis-shaped the world in which they inhabit.  Old enough to witness the countless acts of incredible heroism, selflessness and sacrifice which came to define the reality of the day. Old enough to mourn for those who didn’t make it down. Old enough to pay respect to those who dared to go up, that others might live.

This year I learned something new. Having lived my entire life in the western states, I didn’t personally know anyone whose life was lost that day. Until today. Today I learned that an old friend from high school, someone with whom I lost touch shortly after graduation, as often happens, was working on the 79^th floor of the South Tower that day. She made calls to her husband and her aunt, who had raised her from age nine, to say that she was ok. But she didn’t make it out. We weren’t close, but I remember her life. I mourn for her family and their loss in a way that is closer to home, more personal, less abstract. 

Each year, I process the event a little bit differently. Somehow, ten years of life seems to change one’s perspective. Today, I experience the memory of the day with a diminished sense of adversariality towards those who perpetrated those evil acts. Today I am reminded that this world, this creation and its inhabitants, are broken and lost. It is easy to mourn for the victims, but today I found myself mourning for those who brought this very destruction to our shores. What kind of life experience so tears at one’s heart that they might be brought to the point of such horrific action. How tragic that an entire life might be defined according to a slow envelopment in a violently distorted view of God of humanity. Not that I in any way abstain from assigning responsibility to those who do indeed bare it, but today I mourn for the life so profoundly deceived and wasted.

So, I suppose the question which perpetually nags at our subconscious is one of meaning. What does it mean? Does it change how I think my country should play out its power in the world? Does it change who I am likely to vote for? Does it change how I parent, teach, work and play? Hopefully. Life is fragile, fleeting. Fellow humans within my little sphere of existence are living with the daily experience of a cracked creation. They need a hand, an ear, a meal, a glimpse of truth expressed in the smallest acts of love and compassion which pierce the prevailing deceptions of the day. 

And, at times, they need someone willing to be the hero who goes up when everyone else is going down.