Today I watched 1st grade cub scouts raise the elementary school flag to half mass and salute it, leading the school and all its students, faculty and parents in the pledge of allegiance. I choked back tears.
I watch daily while staceyIt and CPT_Taylor tweet back and forth on Twitter while he's in Afghanistan and find myself feeling grateful and scared for a couple I don't know.
I spent four and a half years worrying about my brother-in-law, a sergeant in the Army, while he was in North Korea and Iraq twice, earning a Purple Heart and losing his best friend.
I can't see a man or woman in their military, police or fire uniform without getting a lump in my throat.
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I wasn't going to write this post. Not because I don't have anything to say about 9/11; quite the opposite, really. I'm afraid I can't possibly do my emotions justice via words crafted together in this space when the enormity of it all is just so... so much bigger than this.
But as today inches by with a weird peculiarity and unsettling ache, I find my thoughts constantly drifting back to eight years ago when our world profoundly changed. (I remember thinking in the days, weeks and even months following the attacks that people had profoundly changed; that we as Americans had been affected in ways that could only sprout good but I no longer believe that. I think for most, the change, the hope, the unity was temporary and fleeting - something that angers me at every September 11 anniversary when suddenly America re-remembers and decides to care and reflect again.)
Like everyone else, I will never forget where I was and what I was doing the morning of the attacks. It was early for us on the west coast, but I was awake, the news blaring from the old TV in the bedroom so I could hear it over the fan in the adjacent bathroom where I was putting on my make-up, getting ready for work. Just like I did every day.
Breaking news that a small, possibly a Cessna, two-seater airplane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers stole my attention away from the mirror and had me brushing my hair in front of the TV, lowering myself to the edge of the bed to listen as the anchors showed images of flames bursting from the side of the building, flailing for possible reasons why a plane might have accidentally done this, how this could happen; the usual rhetoric news stations ramble through during police chases when they have no real facts to provide yet.
I called my mom. "Did you hear about the airplane in New York?" I asked. Of course she had. She always listens to the news on the radio in the morning while getting ready. "So sad" she agreed.
And as the anchors continued to scramble for possible justifications on this "horrific accident" I watched on live television as a huge commercial airplane flew into the side of the second tower. I stood back up. The phone rang instantly and I didn't have to say anything when I answered, just "I saw it too. Oh my god. I just saw it. What's happening?"
And as I watched the news anchors panic and scramble and breakdown themselves on national television, the information getting worse by the minute, I began to panic. This wasn't an accident. Oh my god, this wasn't an accident. The whole nation was essentially on lockdown and now they were talking about Los Angeles as being a potential target. My husband was in Los Angeles. In a skyscraper. At a technology conference. And I couldn't get to him and he couldn't get to me.
I went to work. Only because I had to go to work - we were in the middle of a huge launch of a new chemotherapy drug and my 80 hour work week would not stand still despite the fact that country, time, everything I thought I knew, seemed to.
We stood in the conference rooms and watched CNN lifelessly. Shaking our heads, crying, unable to take our eyes off images we didn't want to see. Then came the impromptu standing meeting by the Vice President who told us one of our scientists had been on the plane that hit the Pentagon. She wasn't supposed to be - but had decided to take an earlier flight home because she missed her kids.
She just wanted to see her kids. That still haunts me.
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While I will never forget feeling so lost and sad and devastated on September 11, 2001, I also won't forget how - just for a moment in our history - we were such an amazing, united country. How we stood behind our president and military, how you couldn't buy an American flag because they were sold out, how people managed to find overwhelming pride in a common cause. I was never so proud to be an American.
I also won't forget how everyone promised to not forget ("We will never forget!") when really, what they must have meant was "until it's OK to forget." Because in reality, we are right back to where we were as a country before 9/11. We distrust our leaders if they're not from our political party, we're finding newsworthy (headline even) topics in sex, lies and scandal and find ourselves more informed on celebrity gossip than healthcare reform.
We no longer support the war we once all stood behind (whether it was the right or the wrong thing - whether we had all the facts or felt deceived, we were once a united front) while our soldiers continue to fight and die for our country so that we can have the RIGHT to call our presidents "idiots" and criticize their administrations.* Just because the death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan are no longer the leading headline news every night, doesn't mean it ceases to exist. We've removed our embedded reporters and stopped doing charitable shows for military families WHO STILL LIVE THIS LIFE. The yellow ribbons that hugged every tree in suburban towns across American are long gone and the only "Support our Troops" magnets left on cars have now faded from yellow to white.
And the American flags that used to hang from every home on every street? They have either been put away or hang there tattered and disgraced, left also to be forgotten.
But we said we would never forget...
Perhaps we remember the events of September 11 but it seems we've definitely forgotten the only good that came of it - the spirit of patriotism and togetherness it gave this country.
Today I mourn the loss of lives and the loss of our security since being attacked. But I also grieve for my country who has lost sight of itself, despite itself.
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*I know I'm not of the majority, but I will admit that while I don't agree with the way the Bush Administration did things, I still respected him as our President. I think a country should stand behind its leader, especially when having facing enemies abroad.
