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Today....

*** portions of this post are taken from last year's post on 9/11 ***


Eight years ago today I was sitting in a hotel room in Boston with the guy I was dating at the time, a pilot for Continental, watching the world come crumbling down... He was supposed to have a flight from Boston to D.C. that morning but there was some sort of issue with his plane the night before and so the flight was delayed until later in the day. We spent the next few days watching the news reports in the hotel room and the hotel lobby, frantically calling our friends in NYC to make sure they were safe, talking to the other pilots and flight attendants at the hotel and wandering around downtown Boston, completely stunned.

There was an article in the Boston Globe today about how teachers are changing the way they teach their students about 9/11 because of many of the students either weren't born yet or aren't old enough to remember much about that day.  For those of us who can vividly recall every horrible minute of it this is hard to imagine as that day changed all of us profoundly.

When you have a child everything changes.  I can't even being to imagine the fear I would feel for my son if something like 9/11 were to happen again.  I'm thankful that he won't grow up with the real-time images of that day in his head.  I hope and pray that in his lifetime he will never have to witness such tragedies and that if he does that our country will be able to come together once again to stand strong.  He was born at a time of great change in our country and I hope that the changes will all be positive and that he will only experience a united and peaceful homeland

This morning I am remembering those who were lost and those who lost family and friends on that day.  I'm remembering a country that came together in the aftermath of tragedy and how the patriotism and strength of our leaders, volunteers, soldiers, police, and fire men and women got us through.
Remember by drp.
photo by drp on flickr

There's nothing that I can say that will honor the lives lost on that day as much as I want to... There aren't enough memorial services, moments of silence, or monuments in the world to bring them back or to assuage the pain felt by everyone but especially by the families and friends of those who were lost...

I think that the best we can do is to let our actions honor the people and lives lost on September 11.

So today, let's put aside our differences, our quarrels about health care, our snarky comments and our derision for the "other" party, and just be Americans. Americans who lost some of our freedom on that day eight years ago. Americans who lost some of our trust, some of our optimism and idealism. Let's get out our flags and wave them high over our heads as we are all together in this, we have all lost and learned from that day, we are all different people than we were then, and we should all focus on being UNITED as a country, not divided, at least not today... 




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