I had recorded the 9/11 shows from Sunday evening while I was watching the Cowboys game. And no I didn't cry for the game, although it was soooo not the way I wanted it to turn out. OK, so we are 0-1 right off the bat. We will get over it. But it seemed a bit trivial that night, they were in NY, they were playing NY, there were memorials going on all around them. NY won in NY, on a day when NY was remembering the worst day of all its lifetime. I'm good.
Later, after that night I watched a couple of the shows, still haven't had time to watch them all. People connecting with the people who helped them or saved them on that day. Even soldiers/veterans who went to war after that in Afghanistan and survivors working today together on the rebuilding. Several times I cried a little, but when I watched the kids who were born after their fathers had died on that day, I cried like a baby.
Let me tell you, there were several times watching these kids, listening to them, seeing their pics right beside the pics of their dads and how much they looked alike. It was so cool. One little girl said, "I love him, I never met him, but I know that I love him."
I really, really cried when they showed the woman and her child that were Muslim and she too had lost her husband in the towers. He was a waiter in the restaurant on one of the top floors, when he had come to America he was a physicist and gave it up to move his family to freedom in America. It told how she had been treated badly because she was and they didn't realize she was a widow of the attack with children who had lost their father. What really got me was that when she lost him she didn't know how to drive a car. I know, sounds silly, but it showed how she immediately took driving lessons and had film of her getting her first driver's license. While the man was talking to her, giving it to her, she could not help but cry. It got me.
I could only imagine how overwhelmed she was living in a new country, then losing her husband, I imagined she felt so alone. Her children were fatherless, she lost her man, she was receiving anger and she didn't know how to drive. I imagined that all of that culminated and combined with the joy of getting her first driver's license overwhelmed her at that moment. Being proud that she had succeeded, being sad that he wasn't there with her to see it or share it with her. I am sure that is how I would have responded.
Wow, this past week or so we have been inundated with reminders of how precious life is, how short it can be, how trivial some of our worries are and how much we have to be thankful for and really, really important, we are sharing in something that happened to all of us. Their losses touched us, this thing that happened affected all of us in many different degrees. I am glad to feel these feelings, to see their feelings to learn more and more each time I watch these shows. There was much I didn't know and so much going on now and I gain knowledge continually that I am glad that I gain.
I was in NYC 9 months before 9/11 and I was there 6 months after. I plan to go after 2012, after they finish the museum and the Transit. I, like many people I know and I am sure that feel as if they were there, that are proud to be an American during this time and I want to pay my respects to all those who lost their lives and those who lost their loved ones. It is all a very huge and life altering event that happened in my lifetime, in my country, to my people. Nothing bad happened to me personally, to my body that day, but I will forever feel that on that day, strangers, people I didn't know, became like family to me. It happened to them, it happened to all of us.
Just Saying.
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