Today is a very bittersweet day for me. I got great news last night. One of my good friends that was over in Iraq on his second tour of duty is home and safe. When I saw his name on my phone I nearly jumped out of my skin. So last night was a really good day. He is going to take some time to come home in the next few weeks and I am going to get to see him. So that makes me very happy and grateful that he made it home safe again.
Today is September 11th. It is the day the world changed for me. I can still vividly walk you through that day if you ask me too. I can still remember the feeling of relief when I found out that the last of my college friends living in NYC was OK. Then getting the phone call from a friend I used to work with to tell me that my manager from there was on that second flight. I can still remember that I was silent and felt like my heart stopped beating for a few seconds. All the sudden it wasn't just a tragedy it was a personal tragedy. My manager and the closest thing I had to a mentor at my first job was dead? How is that possible? How is that fair? What is going on in the world?
I know that it affected all of us and touched all of us in our own way. There is something about this day that always get me reflective and always gets me thinking about Shawn. I wear my red, white, and blue ribbon with an American flag and I want people to ask me about it so I can tell them about Shawn. What a great guy he was, how much he was full of life, that he had one of those smiles that was infectious and you just couldn't help but smile back.
I can't believe that six years have passed and that we as a country have gotten to the place that we are in now. I don't want to turn this into a place I talk about my politics because one of the things I love is that I know a lot of my friends have different views then I do when it comes to that stuff. I value the fact that we respect each other's right to have a different view point. I do want to say this. I just wish we had seen the good that came from the aftermath actually stick around in society. More of people giving of time and working together and that some of the stereotypes and walls could have been broken down for good. Wouldn't it be great if instead of Paris Hilton going to jail being a story on CNN if instead they used that time to talk about some community service initiative that is underway or the rebuilding of New Orleans after Katrina. Why do we only hear about the bad on the news? Can't we use some of the time to tell us about the good in mankind as well? OK I am going to get off my soap box now and get back to work. Just wanted to give you a little insight into my feelings.
I will never forget September 11th. It showed me the best and worst of mankind from one event.
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2 comments:
Hi Jackie – you put a lot of my feelings into words with this post, and I thank you for it. I’m also very happy to hear that your friend is home from Iraq safely; there are a couple of people over there right now who are in my thoughts every day. I too remember the day as if it were yesterday – I remember the exact when and where of nearly every minute, who I called and in what order, the route that I walked home after my building was evacuated, the smell in the air, the dust that obscured the sun, and the night I spent in a small apartment with some friends, glued to our phones and TV sets. I remember my neighbor whom I had known since elementary school, and who had suddenly vanished. I had been in the towers on the sixth of September, and I remember developing those photos three months after the attack and keeling over. Politics aside, that day brought out some of the best in humanity – amidst a tragedy too large and terrible to be expressed in words – but six years on, I don’t understand it, I expect that sixty years from now I still won’t, and I certainly cannot forgive a media which yesterday spent more time bashing Britney’s performance than on events that affected (and continue to affect) the entire world.
Andrew somehow I never put together that you were living in NYC on September 11th. I should have but I never realized. I can only imagine what that day was like for you. Consider yourself added to my list of people that I always take a moment to be grateful that they lived through that experience and are still in my life.
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