September 11- Eight Years Later

Every year I try to come up with a poignant post that captures the feeling of the day for me. Most of the time I feel like I come up short.

This year I decided to just write a few words, link to some old posts and include perhaps a word or two. Of the posts I linked to below the two that really grab me are Eicha- One Last 9/11 Post and As The Bodies Fell- He Played.


I wrote As The Bodies Fell- He Played three years ago and in some ways it is the most significant 9-11 post I have written. The image of my son playing with his blocks while I watched people jump from the towers is seared into my memory.

I remember the feeling of pain and anger. I remember thinking about how many children were going to go to bed as an orphan, or if they were lucky with one less parent. And I remember hugging that little guy and wondering what sort of world he was going to grow up in.

This year decided to run it again.

Eicha- One Last 9/11 Post requires a bit of explanation. In general people associate Eicha with Tisha B'Av, which is a day of mourning within the Jewish calendar. On that day the Book of Lamentations (Eicha) is read. But in this context it actually refers to chanting. In general when Jews read from the Torah there is a style with which it is done.

We do it differently on Tisha B'Av. Eicha refers to that style. The audio post is of a man chanting the final messages of victims of 9-11 using the Eicha style. It is hard to hear.

Anyway, here is a link to some old posts from the past.

Eicha- One Last 9/11 Post 
September 11- The Memories Continue
As The Bodies Fell- He Played
We Remember
Football Saves Lives
911- Five Years Later An Angry Rant 
September 11 Musings 

 

As The Bodies Fell- He Played

(Originally posted here.) 
 

Not unlike so many others the fifth anniversary of September 11 has been weighing upon me. I have been mulling over my thoughts and feelings and trying to decide what to say. I feel the weight of the moment and it makes me uneasy.

I have waded through hundreds of thousands of words that others have written, listened to audio clips of the day and spent far too much time watching video. My goal is to share my thoughts with you and to do so with as much eloquence and dignity as I can muster.

I am a decent writer, but others are far better than I am so I will leave the longer essays in their capable hands. As for the video, well I think that this time around I'll let others posts their tributes/comments/criticisms on their own sites.

If you are interested in that kind of thing you might want to click here.

It was a Tuesday morning. Here in LA it was like many other mornings but this time my routine was interrupted by a call from my employer. She let me know that there had been an attack and that the office was going to be closed.

When I turned on the television my jaw dropped. I sat there transfixed by the sight of the planes crashing into the towers and the eventual collapse. I was dumbstruck by it all. But what I remember most of all is rather simple.

As I sat on the couch trying to process it all my son played. He was ten months old and oblivious to the pictures of the carnage. He held colored blocks and studied them. He grabbed stuffed animals and hugged them. He took toy cars and banged them on the floor and all the while the television showed the bodies falling from the sky.

The bodies fell awkwardly through the air. Some were still and some moved every which way, as if they were desperately trying to learn how to fly.

The bodies fell and he continued to play. The bodies fell and I stared at him. He was oblivious to it all. I felt guilty and relieved. Guilty because I knew that the people I saw on television were important to someone. A wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a father, a son and or brother.

They were people, but from 3000 miles away they were like specks.

I remember picking up the big boy from the floor. He smiled at me and pulled on my hair. I smiled back and hugged him tightly. I held him in my arms and prayed that the war would end before he was old enough to be at risk.

And now five years later he is old enough to be quite aware of the world around him. We have worked hard to maintain his innocence so that he might be a child for as long as possible. In many ways we have succeeded, but I worry that come monday morning that might change.

I have other 911 stories about the people I knew in the city and the things that happened to them. I was pretty lucky. 911 cost me a lot of money, but that is nothing compared to others.

This summer I was forced to spend some time explaining war to him. This summer he lost a little bit more of his innocence. I am hopeful that Monday will not take more from him.

The picture below is a personal favorite of mine. To me it is a reminder of hope and a symbol that we may have had our nose bloodied but we were not broken. Right now there is a lot of acrimony and partisan bickering, but Osama and company better remember that there is no dispute here about finding them.

There is a long memory and G-d willing they will all be brought to justice. In the interim I offer my own hope and fervent desire that we see a speedy end to the various wars and conflicts and that the coming year is one of peace.

Eicha- One Last 9/11 Post

Rabbi Irwin Kula has taken some of the final recordings of 9-11 victims and set them to Eicha trope. I was surprised by how hard it was to listen.

September 11- The Memories Continue

As a child I remember hearing my parents and their friends talk about how the impact that President Kennedy's assasination had upon them. They talked about how they remembered where they were and what they were doing when it happened.

The child I used to be had trouble understanding that, although the events of my own life taught me otherwise. I can tell you where I was when I learned that President Reagan had been shot. I can tell you what I was doing when we lost the Challenger and Columbia and I can tell you what I was doing on 9/11.

I spent some time trying to decide if I wanted to write a new post for 9/11. I mulled over whether I would just show the firemen raising the flag or post the video of the attack on the towers.

Tomorrow the family will do what we always do. Mom and dad go off to work and the kids will go off to school, it will be business as usual.

In other homes around the country children will mourn the loss of their father/mother/brother/sister/husband/wives. They'll be faced with the hard reality that time never stops. Tragedy may strike, but the world continues. It is a hard and bitter lesson.

Tomorrow I'll coach soccer practice and thank god that the boys and I live in a country where we can do this. I'll listen extra carefully to their conversation to see if any of them discuss the day, and then figure out if we need to talk about it at all.

Regardless of what happens I'll spend time thinking about the day and I'll probably take a moment to watch the video. The horror of that day never goes away. I have seen the towers collapse more times than I can count, but it always bothers me. And the day that it doesn't will be the day I wonder about myself.

I'll probably spend a few minutes in silent prayer hoping that the country comes together and that whomever is elected president exceeds all expectations. The best thing that we can do to honor the memories of those we lost is work to improve things here. We won't forget them.

For those who are curious here are some related posts.

As The Bodies Fell- He Played
We Remember
Football Saves Lives
911- Five Years Later An Angry Rant
September 11 Musings

Smooth Stone has a fine memorial post to Welles Remy Crowther, a victim of the terrorists. It should be noted that Smooth's post was part of the Project 2,996 blog.