It's raining here today. It wasn't raining on this day seven years ago. That day was bright and sunny and seemingly perfect.
I was on the only other medical leave I've ever taken. Seven years ago. I was anticipating the beginning of my ministry at LCotC, having left a life-depleting situation in my prior church. I got up early (yes, me - I was trying to reset my body clock to adjust to the new job) and went for a walk.
As I approached the house, I thought "It's going to be a beautiful day." Around here in September, that's rare and wonderful.
I stepped out of the shower around 8:30 and then hit the kitchen for some coffee and breakfast. After that it's kind of a blur. I remember the kettle clicking and Pillar saying, "Sue." He probably said something else, and so did I, but time has passed and I don't remember what was said.
Then the second plane hit.
I had to go outside. I stepped outside the back door and there was not a single sound in the air. Not a bird. Not a dog barking. Not a car engine. Nothing. We live in the middle of a typically busy neighbourhood.
It was so quiet that it frightened me. It was as if the whole world had stopped. It had. I had never experienced that kind of haunting silence since before. It got into my bones and has never left me. The Terror, or whatever you want to call it, that silenced even the birds thousands of miles from the crash sites is something very dark. That silence carried more power than all the words of all the commentators that day and for all the weeks that followed.
So today I'm thinking of lives lost, including Canadian lives, and wondering how we've changed. I'm thinking of heroes. And I'm wondering why it is that when I stepped out in the rain to get the mail today, I didn't experience that same kind of quiet terror for the 6000 or so people who will die today because of HIV/AIDS. Why doesn't my heart skip a beat when hunger and homelessness and pain and war still threaten human life and dignity?
Seven years later and I'm still puzzled by that unique silence. Seven years later and I'm no closer to understanding what started as a perfect day and became an inconceivable nightmare.
Prayers and thoughts to all of you who were there, who had friends there, who lost friends that day. Peace be with you all.
4 comments:
Oh wow. A silence like that would have been so eerie.
I remember it was silent in my classroom as we watched the first tower collapse - inconceivable that they would fall and yet there it was, before our eyes on live TV...
Wow.
i didn't lose friends that day. my sister did; her friend's parents were on one of the flights. but as someone who grew up during the cold war, remembering bomb drills, thinking we might all blow up in a nuclear attack -- this was the most frightening day.
i live on the west coast, and read about the first plane on the internet, before anyone else was up. and then the second plane hit, just as i was getting the kids ready for school -- that's when i realized it was really bad. when the first tower collapsed, i was driving my daughter to school. we did not want to scare the kids, thought they'd be better off in school as usual, but the tower collapsing was beyond imagination.
i was just about to leave my long-time job, but called in to say i was staying home. my job was across the bay, and there were rumors of other aircraft having been hijaked, rumors of nationwide threats. i did not want to be stuck on the other side of the bridge, away from my kids if the worst happened. almost nobody went in that day. we were all glued to the TV and internet, watching the crashes and fires and collapses over and over.
my daughter and i spent so much time together those next weeks, just talking, or visiting a nearby impromptu memorial. we made origami cranes -- that is what we do, facing the unthinkable and hoping for peace. we brought candles. we read messages that people wrote. we hung out with strangers, because we didn't want to be alone.
It was the silence of the days after that stay in my memory the most. No airplanes. None at all.
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