(Background: A while back I was at work. Technically, we are entitled to a break but it doesn't happen. I like to write or read. While doing it, Blair called and asked what I was doing and I told him that I was reworking something I had written. We started to talk about regrets. I asked him---what would you regret more should you find out that you had a short time to live? That which you did or that which you did not do with your life. He did not hesitate in giving me his answer. Sadly, about a month later he became ill. Tests showed he had cancer. Blair died this past month. So, I finished the piece and it's dedicated to my friend.)
The beauty of the day somehow added to the unreality of the event. There were blue skies over much of the continent that morning. Though it was the first week of school for most, it was so much like summer that the impetus to play hooky must have been felt by many. Even the jaded worker drones had to have heard the faint laughs of Tom and Huck and contemplated calling in sick.
The initial incomprehensibility may have been as a reult of the spate of l970's disaster movies we'd watched. It was the hijacked plane, the towering inferno and Black Sunday group somehow interspliced into one film. Perhaps that without the laugh track, musical score or commentary by Larry King we're no longer capable of processing events on our own. Reality, however, did finally hit. This was no "War of the Worlds" with relief at hand during the next commercial break.
Each year as September 11 comes around, I chose to reflect on how this traumatic event has really affected my life. I do not fly, but as a result of my finances I didn't travel before. I am not in a job negatively impacted by that day. I have never mistaken the white powder on the counter for anything but spilled sugar or salt and I do not scan public places for mysterious packages. My only fear of the postal system relates to my Visa bill.
What I can't get beyond, however, is the last minutes in the lives of those people who fell or leapt from the skies. The people on some of the planes kn ew after the first furitive phone calls what awaited them. They had several minutes to appraise their lives; to become their own St. Peter.
Who did these people choose to call? Did they profess their love or their apologies? As they sat huddled in the back of those planes and went through the balance sheet of their lives did they have more regrets over what they did or what they did not do? Did they lament not smiling at the person on the train that they'd always secretly liked? Did they finally accept their talents and recognize the waste in not developing them? Was it the silence over last night's dinner that haunted them?
The reports that we heard via the media conveyed the concern towards others that these final calls displayed. Not only did they talk about love for their families, but they wanted to reassure them somehow that everything would be all right. "Don't worry, it will be quick", said one caller. They did not seek an outlet for their own terror, but rather wanted to alleviate that of others. "Be happy, I love you and go on."
The ultimate form of altruism was displayed by the rescue personnel and the passengers on Flight 93. The fire staff were proffesionals of whom many must have assessed the situation and realized that they would not make it out. They nevertheless put on their gear and headed up the stairs. There were reports even of untrained civilians who stopped to help strangers in those two towers; this in a city that once embraced its brusqueness and where aloofness was a badge of cool. Some of these people died in the staircases as they could not leave another human alone in that hell. It would seem that the inherent strength and goodness of these people was magnified at the end; they became even more of their true selves.
In the end it is this that I cannot get beyond; the final minutes. The people that even as they jumped to their deaths took the hand of another. Those passengers who had mere minutes to assess, comprehend, plan and act to avoid a far graver catastrophe. As they looked out at that beautiful blue sky and knew that it would momentarily be gone to them forever they somehow saw beyond that horizon and past themselves.
I think of the lines spoken in commemoration of another conflict..."Never have so few sacrificed so much for so many" and ask myself what would I do in those last few minutes? More so, what are we capable of doing now? Finally, why do we allow those regrets to build and why are there far too many moments not taken? So on September 11, I will think of the profound sadness of the day itself but also of the waste and neglect we allow to happen each day.
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