This morning on Today, Matt Lauer posed this question to the panel of Today's Professionals (which included Paula Abdul standing in for Dr. Nancy), "Is the attention over 911 waning? Have people moved on?"
Umm, wow. How do you move on from the most horrific act of terrorism on U.S. soil in which over 3,000 people died?
I can see the point. It's been eleven years. College freshmen were only in first grade when this happened, and most of them had probably never seen the Twin Towers anyway.
But does that mean that we have forgotten? That we should just move on?
I was not alive when Pearl Harbor happened or when JFK was shot. But I do remember when the space shuttle Challenger exploded, and I definitely remember when 911 happened. As Donny Deutsch said, "It is up to parents and educators to keep the spirit of 911 alive." (That may not be the exact quote, but the idea.)
And Starr Jones was right on when she said, "The families have moved through, but they will never move on."
For those of us who have had something horrible happen to someone we love, we spend so much time trying to move through the tragedy, but we will never forget having lived it. We live it over and over and over.
Every anniversary (or as I like to say, crapiversary), every time something similar happens to someone else, every time we hear a story like our own, we remember.
And we do a pretty good job of making sure that no one else will forget either.
Today, at the site of the Twin Towers, only family members will be allowed to speak.
This month, Pediatric Cancer Awareness month, people like me and Mary Tyler Mom tell our children's stories over and over.
Even someone like Anna See, who lost her son Jack in a tragic drowning, tells her story, fresh and still painful, just a year after his accident.
But what we try to do is not drag people down with our words, but rather lift people up. We try to inspire hope that this crazy, sometimes awful world in which we live is not all bad all the time.
In our attempts to remember, that's something we never want to forget.
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Will you watch any of the 911 coverage today or attend any services?
My oldest, Adam, was 4 months old when the tragedy of 9/11 struck. I was teaching morning kindergarten, and went home in the afternoons, holding my baby, stuck in front of the TV, mesmerized. I had nightmares. I felt like we brought little Adam into a terrible world that would never be the same. I guess it isn't. I cannot go to services or watch any of it on TV. I talk about it with my children a bit. We have a great book called, "September 12" Basically it is about how we knew the world would be okay, written by kids. But it still seems like yesterday. It still seems so raw. I cannot believe it has been 11 years!
ReplyDeleteWe had just gotten married and I really wanted to start having kids, but the thought of bringing them into a world like that terrified me. Until Hubby reminded me that our parents were born during war and so were we. :(
DeleteVery well said by Starr Jones, I say. Praying for all families who have gone through tragedy--9/11, pediatric cancer or otherwise. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, wish I'd said it! ;) Thanks for the prayers, my friend.
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