What stands out for me when I think of September 11, 2001, is the tremendous response of people involved:
On that day, strangers helped each other, people around the world expressed horror, compassion, and a desire to help us. Across America people lined up to give blood to help the survivors. It turned out that there were few survivors, but people were doing what they could. People waited for hours and hours to give blood to help out a stranger. These are the same people who piss and moan in the grocery store checkout if there's a delay. But they waited calmly for a chance to do something, anything, to help.
In addition to all the dead, these are the things that I want to remember.
In addition to all the dead, these are the things that I want to remember.
5 comments:
Thank you for this post, and for remembering.
I hope you are well.
Yolanda
I suppose everyone will forever remember where s/he has been on 9/11 in 2001. In the meantime I have watched these two planes hitting the twin towers hundreds of times on TV and it still seems unreal and unbelievable to me.
That was a beautiful post!
What I will remember now, with anger, is how we as a nation had the support and love of the rest of the planet, and we foolishly, arrogantly squandered it.
I will remember that the same man who permitted 9/11 to happen on his watch is now using the murders of 3000 American citizens to his own nefarious ends.
I will remember American citizens jumping to their deaths to escape a fiery demise. What must go through a person's mind, making a decision like that one? What sort of twisted, horrible, beautiful logic must have been involved? Firefighters and witnesses on the ground report seeing people jumping out of the windows in groups, and there is photographic evidence of that (although you have to search fairly hard to find it...typical American mindset, censor the photos so that we can all pretend that it never happened on the Connecticut Brat's watch).
They held hands, all the way down to the ground.
Witnesses also report seeing numerous jumpers visibly praying before they went out of the window, several making the Catholic Sign of the Cross.
Christians are raised to believe that suicide is a sin. I cannot fathom Jesus keeping any one of those souls out of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Yolanda-Thank you.
Mone-I know, the shock just doesn't wear off.
Pendulum-thanks!
Laura-I have all of that anger too. But I think it's important to remember that separately, if possible. I started out with a raging post, because as you said, there's just so much to be furious over.
But the people who died, and the compassionate reactions of that day deserve to be remembered. Too often, they're swallowed up in the political fight, and that's horrible. It is difficult to talk about 9/11 at all, with the way that so many have used it for their gain. But the dead deserve better than that.
GWB and cronies should be brought up on charges of war crimes, but that's, for me, a different subject.
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