Remembering September 11, 2001

In five days, it will have been eight years since my mother died. She was quite an extraordinary woman, and I miss her.

But the reason I remember her today is because 9/11 always reminds me of the day I was getting ready to go to Florida and stay with her for that last time. Sisters Ellen and Nancy were already down there, and sis Jeanie was on her way to my house. The plan was that she would leave her car here. I'd drive us down to Florida (because I always have to be the driver. I insist.). But as fate would have it, we didn't leave that day.

Because I was packing, I didn't turn on the television. Normally, I am obsessed with checking in with the morning news, but I was only concerned with Mama. Until that is, I got a phone call from a friend telling me to turn on the TV. An accident had happened and the World Trade Center had just been hit by a plane. I immediately tuned in and observed the horrors unfold, alone at first, but together in spirit with the rest of you. And you know what happened. As things unfolded,  we all came to the realization that that first plane was the beginning of an attack against the people of the United States and not an accident at all.

I don't remember the sequence of everything; it was incredibly traumatic even to those of us far from the attacks. My children were dismissed from school early that morning, and the grown ones who lived in town came to my house so we could all comfort and strengthen one another. Jeanie arrived, having heard about it when she was almost to my house. I met her in the driveway, and we held each other and cried for all those people.

To people like my husband who were at work with no access to television or radio during those awful first hours, the reality didn't set in until they reached home and saw the events played out again and again on television. But it did happen, and eventually it became very real to everyone here in the United States of America.

There are those who for whatever twisted political reasons, attempt to put the blame for this unprevolked act of war onto the shoulders of the people of the United States. I've seen the shows and read the accusations, and have concluded that in order to believe such things, one has to really want to believe. Such theories can only survive in a mind wide open to suggestion or one already poluted with anti-American sentiment. It requires both faith and fantasy to believe in something so foundationless.

Don't think I'm just skipping down the Yellow Brick Road of Life, oblivious to lions lurking in the shadows. Like all countries, the United States is not a perfect nation. Surely we have made many mistakes. But we have also done many good things. Many good things. On September 11, we the citizens and lovers of the United States must remember those good things.

Americans have paid for the freedom of many with the blood of our people. Yes, it was for us (US); you, me, and our children. But it was also for strangers in faraway places whose lives were saved and their countries made free. 

Some are now insisting that it is time to move on. Let it go, they say. Time heals all wounds and its been time enough. But deep wounds leave scars to remind us of what happened. Every now and then we need to take our fingers and retrace the path of those scars so we can remind ourselves what we've been through, and be strengthened knowing how brave and united we became in a time of trouble.

God bless America. Pray for our nation, my friend.