A towering cloud outside of the supermarket in FloridaI just wanted to say hi. I maintained a radio silence yesterday, 9/11.
I have been dealing with a lot of struggles lately, and to tell the truth, I'm just not up to reliving that day 8 long/short years ago. So I didn't post, because I would have felt the need to relive it. This year, I let it go. Without dwelling.
If you'd like to read my story, I wrote it here on my blog last year.
In other news, my friends Nikki and Billy had their first child yesterday. So, I would prefer to remember 9/11 this year as a day of birth and rebirth. Life. Transformation. Faith that we are strong and can go on.
So I played with my kids, drew pictures, cooked delicious pork chops w lime sherry sauce, relaxed and recuperated from the flu (it turns out the relapse thing is a symptom of The Swine) and watched the repeat of Glee, laughing so hard during the "Push It" number that tears came to my eyes.
The good kind of tears.
So, 8 years and a day after that fateful day, I memorialize it by moving on and crying happy tears.
You have my permission to let go of your pain when it is too hard to bear.
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PS I just have to say, when I looked at that cloud picture after posting it, it was so reminiscent of the tower of smoke rising over the city, 8 years ago.
That was my view. But it wasn't a parking lot, it was the East River. And it wasn't the silhouette of a modern church, but the skyline of a grieving city.
Damn. Now you see why I didn't want to open that door?
Rowena--I can't imagine what it must have been like for you, to be so physically close to those terrible events.
There must be millions of stories of how different ones of us were affected that day.
I was here in South Dakota, and as nearly as I remember, my husband and all my kids were here. My brother-in-law was in a lockdown at a nearby Air Force base. I'd gone outside mid-morning and looked at the sky, wondering if something horrible might come out of the sky--be on its way to us, due to our proximity to that airforce base. Such a terrible not knowing.
By late afternoon, what swamped me was realizing that right then, as I watched the TV news, people were dying, alone. I poured out prayers but felt so helpless to comfort them.
Then around six pm, I miscarried. I was 6-8 weeks into an unexpected pregnancy, but one I had recently accepted and started to love. The shock of the miscarriage, on top of the horrible happenings of the day, seemed to send me into a sort of hyper-awareness. I can't scientifically "prove" any of what I'm about to say, but my heart knows the truth of it. A little while after the actual miscarriage, after I'd told my children, I was sitting on the couch, with the scene on the TV in front of me. Just to the side of the TV were the stairs. I sensed and almost "saw" my baby a few stairs up--not as a baby but as a mature being--she was telling me that plans had changed; that her time with me was now over and she was going to comfort others.
It was the oddest combination of peace and sadness.
So my memories of that day are always a strange mix--sorrow over all the hate and loss and destruction. But a quiet joy at "knowing" my last child--Annabelle. I had her so briefly, but I got to say goodbye, and I know she was continuing on in a very important way.
I've got to believe that somebody, somehow, on that day, got to know my sweet Annabelle.
I believe with every scrap of my being that love triumphs over hate.
My love to you, Rowena . ..
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