I was on a bus heading to work at a now defunct bookstore in Dayton, Ohio downtown. I had on my headphones of my CD player a song from the 2nd Chapter of Acts (Christian group). The words still haunt me as they are as prophetic as they are meaningful to me:
NO ONE WILL HAVE A SECRET
NO ONE WILL TELL A LIE
THINGS THAT WERE DONE IN HIDING
ARE GOING TO REACH TO THE HIGHEST SKY
The rest of the day...unforgettable.
I walked in with one of my co-workers in tears. I thought this was a Spielberg movie or something going on the little B&W television. Instead, it was something out of a Sci-fi show of my past only everything went scary. This event--the fallen of New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania--still ranks as the worst day of my life. In fact, it capped off a very bad year for me as everything I knew about myself and my world crumbled. My own misdeeds of a broken marriage, the rocking of my faith, loss friends and family, and new love.
To top it all off (which I would learn a year later) my stepmother was at the towers when the planes hit. Thankfully she got out of the way from the carnage. My step-brother, a bus driver who drove the bus from Battery Park to Central Park, was credited to saving the lives by the mayor. I didn't know this on the day, but in another year I would see my father again for only the second time of my life. My stepmom would tell me how she came out of the underground area and coming out of a Burger King with breakfast for her co-workers when she saw the first plane hit. To know she was there that day and at the site is still stunning to me.
Brenda and I, and our girls, would visit the site for the first time on our first trip to NYC. We would see the building scared by the fire, the gaping hole in what was once the twin towers, and across the street near a church all the flowers and notes still on the iron gates praying love ones will see it and let their families know they are alive and okay. The most moving: The golden earthen globe dinged up by the falling debris but upheld on a platform with an eternal flame for all the dead.
It's still painful to think of the lives changed on that dreadful day. It is still painful of how this administration squandered the good will of the world those few weeks after the strike all for the sake of a failed policy that would keep us stuck in the sand of Iraq. But that's for another debate.
We all remember each heart and life snatched away (in a quick few minutes to agonizing hours) for those agonizing moments etched in our memory. We remember the laughter dying from comedians, the music silenced by the musicians, and those athletes who were too grief stricken even to think about competing in a stadium for a contract or glory. The day and weeks following this tragic date kept a lot of things silenced as we worked through our grief and found a way to get back on our feet again.
But the way I want to pay tribute to the loss souls and our nation is this one simple moment during a halftime celebration months after 9/11. At the Super Bowl, U2 put on the most memorable moment in Super Bowl history and perhaps the best condolence card ever put together. I found it on You Tube and although the cheesy commercial tag at the end ruins an otherwise moving moment I hope you will take away and remember the moment Bono, the Edge and the band helped a nation heal from a grave wound.
Rest well our fellow souls.