Ten years after multiple terrorist attacks succeeded in taking the lives of thousands of innocent human beings, I’ve found it difficult to watch network coverage or to listen to commentary on the radio leading up to the actual anniversary date.
I do know that this happened to us, believe me, and I honestly appreciate the remembrances. The thing is that I can’t help looking beyond the overall national tragedy to the thousands of individual tragedies played out that day, and since because of it. I keep thinking of the heroes, the dying and dead, the rescuers and rescued, as well as the survivors, injured and forced to remember what I can never really imagine.
To me, today, September 11th is about a single phone call, kitchen table, or front door. It’s about those individual places and ways through which one person discovered that their loved one was not coming home. It’s about children, spouses, and parents needing to adapt to the unthinkable, forced to fill a spot that really can’t ever be filled. It’s about love and loss and moving on with a wonderful and necessary piece missing forever.
We can, and will, continue to debate and discuss the ideological, social, and political aspects from our perspectives, both before and since that day in 2001. I am no exception to that certainty. But right now I am going to call my kids, miss my parents, and hug my wife.
John Pride
9/11/2011
