Remembering September 11

Twenty-two Years of Heartache and Healing

Today’s post is a reprint from last year.

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Long after we’re gone and forgotten, the horrific events of September 11, 2001, and its aftermath will be studied, discussed, and remembered.

The most amazing part was that good triumphed over evil, just like all the cartoons, movies, and books I’d watched and read as a kid. Common people became super heroes in the face of abject evil.

And for a few brief seconds, we were one people bound together by our common identity, void of color, creed, and ethnicity. Our common identity as Americans and, more importantly, as humans was on full display. Together we rebuilt our structures and spirit, vowing to seek justice for all those who perished.

This poem by George S. Merriam captures the essence of grief and its various stages.

Today is about commemorating the innocent victims, and the people who risked and sacrificed their own lives in order to save others. It doesn’t get any more honorable than that.

May their memory be a blessing to us all.

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Wounds of the spirit are most gently soothed and made whole by the passing years. Under the old scars flows again the calm, healthful tide of life. Under a great loss, the heart impetuously cries that it can never be happy again and, perhaps in its desperation, says that it wishes never to be comforted. But though angels do not fly down to open the grave and restore the lost, the days and months come as angels with healing in their wings. Under their touch, aching regret passes into tender memory; into hands that were empty new joys are softly pressed; and the heart that was like the trees stripped of its leaves and beaten by winter’s tempests is clothed again with the green of spring. ~ George S. Merriam

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