Least we forget

It was not that long ago, a blink of the eye actually that our world changed.  It's changed in ways drastic and subtle and not always for the better.  The subtle is what bothers me the most.  Those are the ways that you don't notice but effect your day to day life.  It becomes the New Normal...but it's not.

Like anyone of a certain age I remember clearly what I was doing.  I was at home, working on the computer - an old dial up modem driven HP - and as such was unreachable.  It literally took an instant message from a friend in Ireland (ROB, TURN ON YOUR TV NOW!!!) to get me to pay attention.  I turned on the TV about five minutes before the second plane hit the towers.

It's odd, the images that stay with you.  When one of the towers fell (funny but I don't remember which one) and the dust settled the camera panned over the street.  A figure got slowly up, and I didn't even know he was there.  That man was literately buried in dust.

I remember getting on the bus, talking to two older black cleaning ladies....the birds singing.  Standing in an empty city listening to the birds. How odd to be in a city that is deserted.  I rode the bus back home. I mowed my lawn.   Normalcy.  I need something to be normal.  My wife at the time still does not understand my motives or why I turned off the TV.

Sometimes we are so caught up in our day to day lives that we forget history.  Even the most recent of history.  We must understand it, grow from it, and learn from it...of course we must also never forget it because it will repeat itself if we do.  History will always make us remember.

It was about two years later when I found myself traveling the back roads of my native Pennsylvania,  I rounded a bend and realized that I was at the final resting place of Flight 93.   At that time there were plans for a memorial, but nothing had been finalized or built yet. A chain link fence to keep out the morbid or the stupid.  Bears, flowers, notes, pictures covered the ground in a make shift memorial.  Somehow I remember wishing they would just leave the fields...it seemed to be hallow ground and should never be disturbed.

I will be leaving for the Bahama's on Friday.  Teaching my "Daughter-in-law" for lack of a better term how to ride.  Hoping to whatever God is above that I do a good enough job so she does not break her neck if she should crash.   So the next post will be a little more upbeat, a little less heavy.  I was hoping to post this the other day...but I could not find the words.  I'm still not sure if I did.  We, my generation, is still trying to understand this...but  we can never forget that fateful day.