Food for Thought: In Remembrance...

The people of my parents generation have always said, "I remember exactly were I was when Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot" or "I remember where I was when John F. Kennedy was shot."

And people of my generation have said "I remember where I was when Marvin Gaye was shot."

And the people of my generation now have an additional "I remember" moment. ...

"I remember where I was the morning the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center."

That's how I started a post on the tenth anniversary of the tragedy. And I quoted that from a post I wrote 6 years prior to that post.

I myself was on travel for work. I'd been on my current job for only 3 weeks and I'd gone to Denver for a course given by my agency on an instrument that I use for analysis at work. I remember being particularly prayerful before my trip (I left ATL on a Sunday) because I had some strange sense of uneasiness inside. I am thankful for the "Prayer for travel" in my Prayers that Availeth Much book. It was such an odd feeling. I knew I could get on my own plane, but what was that feeling I was getting? So when the tragedy occured, that was a lightbulb moment. I will never forget how I felt inside the couple of days before it happened. And I know it wasn't just me feeling that way when my Pastor posed the question of whether people had strange feelings of "uneasiness" around that time. He had to take some time to explain that.

I don't want to feel that way ever again.

And do you notice that your level of distraction has increased over the years, however subtle it may be? I believe there's a spiritual reason for that, related to what I said in the last paragraph. I think about that on this day also. But that's a whole nother post in itself...

Anyway, it was tough getting on a plane the day after they lifted the flying ban. I actually made it back home that Saturday with only a 1.5 hour delay in flight. Some of the training participants from the Northeast had much worse delays.

On this morning, I took time to pray for the people who lost people that day in the tragedy. It's not only the tragedy that is devastating, but it is the emotional and mental residue left behind that takes its toll.

Many have moved on with their lives... but I am sure that there isn't a day that goes by that they don't think of the loved one lost. Not a day. I pray that they endure the pain and sorrow of it all. Because I know it has to be hard.

I heard on a program yesterday that anyone under the age of 17 years old doesn't remember or understand what happened on that terrible day.

Let's hope that they don't have a "I remember" moment in their lives of such a tragic magnitude.

Let's hope we never experience something that tragic... ever again.

Food for Thought: Tragedy... and Residue.

Today is September 11, 2012.

As of eleven years ago, that date is seared in our hearts and minds forever. And we can all recount exactly where we were the day the towers fell and so many lost their lives instantly...

I know I can. I have written about it over the past anniversaries on this blog and in my personal journals. I was one of those on job travel at the time, way out in Denver. I remember air travel being shut down. I remember standing in the long lines to catch my plane back home. I remember looking around and seeing the fear in the eyes of everyone when air travel resumed. We all wanted to make it home safe. Safe and alive.

Alas, time has passed. We go on with our lives. Life doesn't stop because of the tragedy that occurred. Time stands still for no one.

I am mindful and thankful for the fact that in all these years we haven't had another major attack. Yes, yes, you may say that we are highly protected. And yes that may be true. But I have a doctorate in chemistry. And my masters degree involved explosive type chemicals.

Let's just say another blogger who's an expert in his related field and I were talking a few years back, and uh... let's just say, it's WAY too easy to tare up stuff... I will leave it at that.

But that hasn't happen. Thank goodness for that.

So we all mourn. We all are afraid. Eventually we all go on with our lives. And for a couple of years after the anniversary of 9-11, we held our collective breaths, afraid that something else would happen on the anniversary of that tragic day.

Nothing happened. And with each year, the memory of it is gets smaller and smaller as we stare at it in our rear view mirrors.

We have our memories... and a tall Freedom tower stands in the place where so many died that day.

But you know there is residue: the mental anguish associated with losing someone or something, long after the tragic events have occurred. There are people that day that lost brothers, sisters, mothers, uncles, aunts fathers, husbands, wives and friends...

And they are dealing with the residue of that loss.

All these years later.

One of my favorite personal quotes, and we will call this a LadyLee postulate of sorts...

Not only is the tragedy devastating, but the long term residual effects of the tragedy are also devastating, even more so. 

I myself have written numerous times about this "residue" in the pass, whether it be after a tragic event or as a result or consequence of our own bad choices and decisions.

I think about it often. And my prayer is with those who, some 11 years later, still lay awake at night and are visited with the memories of loved ones... and they are having trouble moving past what happened. We don't hear much about those people. Their stories are difficult realities to portray to a public who loves happy stories and even happier endings.

I myself have to think on the residue from the tragedy in my own life that haunts and bothers me to this day to even hope to relate just a little to those who have had tragedy in their own lives directly related to what happened on September 11, 2012.  We all have had events in some point in our  lives that have affected us in a terrible way.

For myself there have been a myriad of things, which I won't discuss here. (You thought I was longwinded... you don't want to see longwinded, honey.).

But there is one loss that I think about around this time. I think about the loss of my friend, that popular blogger who I called ATLien Nikki... I think of her around this time. It is close to a couple of weeks after the anniversary of her passing. She passed on August 30, 2009, and I purposely didn't write about my feelings- that "residue"- last week as others did. Mostly because I just wanted to be alone with my feelings to examine my thoughts..

I must say that I still, some 3 years later, get teary-eyed over her loss...

Continued tomorrow....