I went to two different 9/11 memorials today. One that my neighborhood had early this morning and then one on the military base. The one my neighborhood had was very quiet, everyone just sort of stood around waving flags, holding lit candles as the H.O.A. president talked about what happened on 9/11 and how we still remember.
The one at the military base broke my heart and left me shattered. I was asked to sing "America the Beautiful" and halfway through I burst into tears. There were so many widows there, children without fathers or mothers, a few that lost both parents. One little girl lost her father in Afghanistan and her mother in Iraq a few years later. I thought about Meagan and Jay and Keith and all of the rest of my military friends who fought in the war and lost their lives. That wasn't what broke me though.
I thought about my friend Justin and how he avoided the tragedy in New York, just because he decided not to go to that part of town that morning, how he could have died from that, only to die from AIDS at the beginning of this year. I thought of the people who went to work the morning of September the 11th or went to the airport as if it were just another day. The conversations that were never finished, the families that forgot to say "I love you" one last time, the people living with regret. Then I thought about those of us who aren't really living at all.
The night before Christopher died I had a bad feeling in my gut that something tragic was about to happen, it was the same feeling I had the morning of the attacks, so I called him every 15 minutes saying "Just making sure you're still alive. I love you. Bye" until finally he stopped me and asked if I needed to talk. I said yes and we talked for two hours. We said "I love you" to each other and hung up. I finally went to sleep after that, it was about 3 o'clock in the morning, I got the phone call from his mother at 9am that he'd passed away in his sleep.
A few days before Justin passed away we talked about all of the close calls that we'd all had with death. The times we'd avoided going to a certain place only to find out that a shooting had occurred. Times that we'd taken a different way home only to find out that a fatal accident had occurred. Justin not going into the city on the morning of 9/11, Tiffany, not being on any of the planes and me, being injured 86 days before my deployment to Iraq, where some of my battle buddies were killed. Then we looked at Justin, something so simple as not getting tested, having sex with his partner bareback for years, even though he knew that his partner was cheating on him, something as simple as that, killed him.
I thought about all of this as I sang and it made me cry. How many of us take life for granted? Take our relationships, our friendships, our loved ones, our partners, even our online friends and family for granted? As if they were promised tomorrow? As if WE were promised tomorrow?
Yes, 9/11 taught us about how strong our nation is, how powerful and courageous we can be if we stand together, how it feels to really be the UNITED States of America. But more than that the attack on America on September 11, 2001 taught us, or rather it should have taught us, how fragile life is, how important it is to treasure every single moment that we have with each other. To love each other as strongly and as fiercely as possible and to make sure that we end every conversation that we have with someone that we love with an "I love you." So that we won't be standing at their funeral or them standing at ours saying "I just wish that I had told you I loved you one more time."
So remember that as we honor the fallen, the victims, the survivors, the troops, the first responders, and those of us who will never forget them.
{HUGZ AND SQUEEZES}
Vee/Vic
