Where were you then? Where are you now?
One thing that persists is grief. There are too many more losses. The mourning for 9/11 is not concluded, and more tragedy has come to the world.
It is important to remember what has happened. If we do not notice the devastations around us, what will we pay attention to?
And if we notice only one tragedy, we are frozen in time, blind, deaf, and numb to the world we live in.
Because of the confluence of circumstances, 9/11 is probably the most memorialized single event in history. If you were more than two or three years old and living in the U.S., 9/11 was part of your life. And it was a moment in time where we had the world's sympathy and help.
This past Labor Day, Lisa and I visited the Harborview 9/11 Memorial Park in Bayonne. It holds the Tear of Grief memorial, a gift from the Russian people (officially named "To the Struggle Against World Terrorism"). We remembered how the day of the visit was the 19th anniversary of our last remembered occasion seeing the World Trade Center towers together. We'd gone into New York to pickup something at J&R Music World, and then took the Staten Island Ferry, with its wonderful views of the harbor.
How tall they stood.
Much has happened since that day. The towers, of course, were attacked and fell just four days later, taking with them thousands of lives. Many that day, many more in the aftershocks around the world, and a growing number each year of the responders who service compromised their health.
No speeches today from me, only honor and remembrance, for those who were there, and for the uncounted numbers who came forth in response. When the towers fell, you stood up.
God bless and keep you.
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