When I started writing this blog in 2006, I asked Daughter how often I should post entries, and would once a week be okay? Unlike the me of three years ago, Daughter actually read blogs, and her response was that nobody would come back for one entry a week. People want content and they want it now. Daughter said the most-read blogs put out daily. Once I regained consciousness, she suggested twice a week at least, so that’s what I’ve done. With very few exceptions, I’ve published an entry every four days since autumn 2006. Which is how it comes to be that for the second time in three years, 9/11 is a publishing day.
Our own family thankfully did not lose any members on that day, but the evidence of those that did was everywhere, and still is. A few weeks after the Towers fell, I went to return a soccer shirt I’d bought for Son at a local store, only to find a sign in the window that the store owner had perished in the attack and the shop was closing. The thank you note for the engagement gift I sent a friend’s sister never arrived after her fiancé never came home from work. The father of one of Daughter’s classmates was an EMT called to the scene. His widow appeared in the paper on the first anniversary of the attacks holding her husband’s photo. We were in the PTA together. It doesn’t go away, and it shouldn’t.
The nation continues to busy itself with related matters, like how to memorialize the day, who should be included in the 9/11 fund, what to build at Ground Zero, and how to tell if the cancers and respiratory disease suffered by those who cleaned up the mess qualify them for posthumous medals. The discussions are endless, and they succeed in keeping attention off the 300-pound gorilla in the room we feel powerless to move. Our troops are dying while the country watches Dancing With The Stars. The whole world and its brother has something to say, but to really hear what’s important, we’d have to start with the 3,000 stories of those who are no longer here to share them. Maybe they’d tell us that the pain is mandatory; now do something about the suffering.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos wish you Peace
