In Pace Requiescat

20 years ago today.  It's one of those anniversaries where we all pause to remember the day.

These anniversaries will become fewer and fewer, because that is how life progresses.  But today, we still pause to remember.

One day, September 11 will be only the day on the calendar between September 10 and September 12. Already, festivals are held on this day.  In fact, Binghamton, New York is holding one tonight (called LUMA).

For our grandchildren, perhaps they will ignore a plaque in the lobby of their high school honoring the alumni who died that day.  This is the plaque in the lobby of my high school. 

One of the names on that plaque in my high school is Christian Regenhard.  He was the youngest New York City fire fighter to die on 9/11. He was one of those who ran to danger, making it possible for others to escape and live another day.

We remember September 11, 2001 in different ways.  Did you know there was a restaurant in the North Tower of the World Trade Center? This tells their story.

I remember September 11 every year.  First, it was my father in law's birthday (although he was no longer with us on that day.)  Then, it became the day I watched in horror (after my employer hastily located a television) as the second tower fell, later finding out that one of my co workers lost his son on that day. His daughter in law was pregnant.  Other people I know from family and friends in New York City lost loved ones, friends, neighbors.  11 people who went to my high school died that day.  Two of them left pregnant spouses. 

There are the children of those pregnant women, who will be reaching their 20th birthdays in the coming days and months.  One of them, Gabi Jacobs Dick, was the son of someone else on that alumni plaque.   The trauma surrounding the day that took the lives of their fathers affected them, too.

Gabi called it "The Butterfly Effect".  The video I linked to in the last paragraph is about three minutes long, and I invite you to watch it.  Gabi has suffered from fears of airplanes, tall buildings and elevators, and this was one of his efforts to conquer those fears.

There were the children in a nearby elementary school and a nearby high school to the World Trade Center in New York City, or the Sarasota, Florida children who had been gathered with then President Bush to listen to a storytime before he was called away.  They are also children of 9/11.

Gabi Dick won't forget. Those other now grown children won't forget.  But maybe you, my reader, don't remember because you weren't yet born, or were too young to remember, and have no personal connection like the children of 9/11.  After all, it's been 20 years.  There is a way to teach that new generation, though.

As long as we give the day meaning, true meaning, and incorporate that meaning into our daily lives, those who come after us will remember the meaning of September 11 2001.  But they will turn that memory into something that matters to them, the generation that didn't witness it on TV or in person.  They only know a post 9/11 world. We of my generation can never truly know what that means, to know a world from before that date we observe today.

Our world isn't theirs.

They will remember, but not the way we do.  Our job is to make sure they know about the day and its meaning, and let them sort it out. Keep in mind that the children born on September 11, 2001, turned 18 on September 11, 2019, and were granted the right to vote.  More have joined them in the past two years.  They can vote.

I hope they will use that power of the vote well.

They are old enough to fight, and die, in service to our country.  Some did, not that long ago, in Afghanistan.

May the almost 3000 who died that day (and those who have since joined them in the hereafter from injuries and related diseases) forever rest in piece.  May their memories be a blessing. 

(Parts of this post were originally posted on other September 11ths).