9/11/18

Copyright © 2018

By Ralph F. Couey

It is a quiet, peaceful morning.  Outside my window the twittering of birds is occasionally counterpointed by the mournful sound of a dove.  In one way, it is the calm before a powerful storm, set to arrive early tomorrow morning.  But it is not just a day of preparation.  It is also a day of remembrance.

Seventeen years ago on another beautiful Tuesday morning, men, consumed by hate and twisted by an ideology that made a religion of peace into an excuse to kill, flew airliners into buildings in New York City and Northern Virginia.  A fourth aircraft dove into an abandoned strip mine in the Pennsylvania countryside, as a group of ordinary people, passengers and crew, fought back.  2,996 innocent people died that day, and in the years since, over 1,400 first responders have died, apparently poisoned by the rubble they worked so hard to remove.

The calendar calls today "Patriot Day" A Day of Service and Remembrance."  And there will be ceremonies in New York, at the Pentagon, and at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  They will not get the attention and focus as in years past.  As the sage once said, "Time moves in one direction, memories in another."  Children born that year will graduate high school come springtime.  For them and millions more, it is not the searing memories, but the colder, less personal readings of history through which they will remember.  

Time has, in some ways, closed the open wound we suffered.  But the scar that remains has already begun to fade.  Today, politicians and pundits will use 9/11 to launch new attacks against each other, urging and manipulating the rest of us to embrace their hate and anger, and join the ever-widening divide.  The sun will set today on a nation wrapped in mutual loathing, divided perhaps beyond redemption

September 11, 2001 and for a precious few days after was a day of unprecedented unity.  Our political, cultural, social, and economic differences were set aside as we joined hands and stood shoulder-to-shoulder, recognizing that what had happened was not an attack on any political party, but an entire nation.  We honored the police and firefighters who unhesitatingly waded into the disaster in the attempt to save lives.  And in one memorable, heart-rending moment, members of the U.S. congress stood together on the steps of the capitol and spontaneously sang "God Bless America."

While this is going on, across America and the world, families will quietly mourn the loss of loved ones.  Some will remember friends and colleagues who were lost.  Maybe some of us will scroll the internet for those horrifying bits of video and remember the emotions we felt that day.  Others may look at the half-masted flags and remember an honored public servant who departed us recently, and then in a jolting moment will remember today's date and what those numbers mean.

It is important that today we remember those events, those feelings. It is important that we honor the memory of those people whose names are etched in stone and marble, if not in our minds.  

But it is most important that today, September 11, 2018, we remember that it is possible for us to look past that which divides us and embrace that which unites us.  That it is still possible for us to stand as one nation, linked by our common membership in that least-exclusive club the world still recognizes as "Americans."

And maybe, just maybe, find a way to love one another.