Sept. 11
Just a response to Brian Kane’s post:
I don’t know that I can add anything more to the din, or that I want to. Still, it’s not right to ignore it and go along blithely as though Wednesday were an ordinary day. I also think it’s a little bit disingenuous and quite a bit overdramatic for me to post some emotionally-overwraught poem or haunting image, or even “a moment of silence”.
I completely disagree. It is ok to go along and keep your thoughts, your feelings, your choice of how you remember the day, private. This day is not about me, my thoughts, my feelings, my words have no place in it. I fear that this “remembrance” is just going to be yet another excuse for people to make this tragedy about themselves rather than the people who died and the people who killed them. Believe me, there were plenty of people doing exactly that on Sept. 11, 2001 and there will be plenty of people doing it again come Wednesday. I refuse to add to it, just as I refused to add to it then. You see, while there were plenty of people publicly worrying about how this might affect them in the future, I was quietly watching the news come over the internet in my office, alone. I was silently hoping and praying that my aunt, who worked in the WTC complex, was ok. (Turns out she had not arrived at work yet and was fine) I didn’t run around crying or publicly displaying my fears, because this wasn’t about me. There were hundreds, probably even thousands of people fighting for their very lives right at that moment, while I was perfectly safe. There was no reason for anyone outside of my wife to spend even a second thinking about me on that day, because no matter what happened to my aunt, I was going to be ok.You should have spent that energy thinking about the people dying, and the people trying to save them.
This year, I hope to do the same, spend some of my own thoughts on the people who died, and their families, and on the anger we should all feel because of what happened. I won’t be spending any time watching news reports, or writing about my feelings, or writing long recaps of how I spent that day, because none of that matters at all. I will go to work, and live my life because in the end, most of those who died, died doing their jobs. Especially the fire and police folks. They would want us to remember them by doing ours.
