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REMEMBRANCE
Saturday Sept. 10, 2016
Nearly 15 years since horror day.
Tomorrow’s anniversary, no different than any day before, or after.
Life’s greatest joys and harshest tragedies show up that way, uninvited. When least expected. Just another day – moments, feelings, etching minds, scarring memories – imprinting our lives beyond any joy or pain we could imagine …
Most often these scares and scars are personal, private and selective – like first meetings, ah+ha moments, sadness moments and joy moments, birth-days and death-events.
9/11 seared memories. For most teens and adults alive that day. We weren’t killed or burned or inundated by ash or debris – but media put us there, at its epicenter. We saw all. We lived it, albeit as safe flies on distant walls – observing, empathizing, while realizing we were so very lucky to be safely parked before our screens. Safe. Riveted. Like never before. Or since.
What about the day before?
Fifteen years ago today, do you remember where you were, what you were doing?
On this day, the day before – September 10th, 2001 – do you have much recollection where you were, or of what you were doing?
I don’t remember tiny details either. I know I was planning a trip I never took – to be leaving the night of the 11th. Not a usual work day. My group worked late on the 10th – planning and rehearsing our presentation for the morning of the 11th. We didn’t mind working on our upcoming pitch to clients. We were dreading ‘rehearsing for our two-headed-ogre bosses’. It wasn’t that we didn’t want constructive feedback – we just didn’t want abuse and ridicule from ‘those two jokers’. We each wished it would be postponed or cancelled. We got our reprieve. Sadly, not in any way we could have imagined or wanted.
What were you doing the day before 9/11?
OK – no need to answer that, most of us won’t have a detailed recollection. How about today – September 10th, 2016?
What experiences are searing into your memory today? All around us, every day, deep burning of powerful experiences are altering lives forever. For some it will be tragedy or trauma. For some, it will be unparalleled joy.
What’s my point?
We have precious moments, often. Events, people, experiences and experiments in life are what makes powerful memories, and previous lessons – we need to appreciate them more. Especially ones that sear our memory with that magic, or that tragic, remembrance of that moment.
Otherwise, just another day we won’t remember.
written / published from Calgary, AB
morning walk with Gusta: 14C/57F, sun infrequently piercing a moody-looking sky; imperceptible breeze (except when I sneeze – which has been often this morning … seems I’ve caught a sniffle), flags hanging more limp than usual, leaves of every colour motionless, Gusta still looking at my quizzically for wearing my BOSE headphones – but she doesn’t understand the peace of walking without a compulsion to hear and smell everything …
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