Finding Our Sense of Unity

 

Twenty-five years ago, I was walking home from the bank where I had just deposited my severance check and a guy came running out of an apartment raving about planes flying into buildings. I thought the man crazy until I got inside my own home, turned on the television and witnessed what appeared to be building two of the World Trade Center collapsing live on television. Although I was around for the Vietnam, Persian Gulf and Desert Storm wars, this was the first time I had seen war being brought to our soil and I was numb. I spent the rest of that day numb, sometimes in tears, watching things unfold on the television and wondering what the world would be like in my near future. Being recently unemployed as well, much of the coming weeks would be spent immersed in the tragedy. 

The world did changed dramatically in the coming years. For a time we came together as a nation to mourn and to take action. The world even joined with us. The brief flame of a united population burned bright and then went out again. We got lost in a few "forever" wars and partisan politics divided us again. Our attentions focused elsewhere and 9/11 became something only brought up once a year. 

Twenty-four years after the attack, I found myself in New York City and at the base of where those two towers had stood, their sockets imprinted into the earth now, forever memorialized. What surprised me most after all that time was that the raw emotions of that day were still there and so near the surface of my being. I made it halfway through the museum memorial and had to stop because I just couldn't take it anymore. It was still too painful to think about. 

Here I am another year later on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attack and already clips of that day have brought tears to my eyes. I am fully convinced at this point that it will be like that until the day I die, much like previous tragedies likely haunted those that lived during those times. It was a moment in time that definitely defined life before and after for those who were old enough to know. It is a part of me that will never leave.

Mostly I think I mourn all those innocent people that died. But I think a big part of me mourns those moments afterwards when we all came together with a defined sense of purpose, if only for a year or two. Maybe someday we will find that sense of unity once again. My only hope is that it doesn't take another tragedy to find it.