Left In Lowell

I didn’t know anyone personally (that I have discovered) who died five years ago on that terrible day, though I had a few acquaintances who were affected.

I tend to avoid all the specials and such at the beginning of September because to a large extent, we’ve already seen this tragedy from every angle in the last five years - from engineers telling us what happened to the structures of the buildings that day, to news anchors reminiscing as to where they were reporting from, to specials on how to make buildings and planes and airports safer.

However, that doesn’t mean I avoid remembering how I felt, or listen to the stories of the people who lost loved ones that day. I watched Flight 93 this weekend and cried through half of it.

In Flight 93, of course, there’s lots of dramatic license taken; we don’t know everything that was said or done on that flight, except through the phone calls from passengers to loved ones and emergency officials about their plans to stop the terrorists from using the plane as a bomb against Washington; and the data from the black box flight recorder recovered after the crash. As a dramatic plot, it was imperfect. And yet, it felt more true and real than this so-called work of truth, Path to 9/11, of which I have seen several scenes posted online.

I look back at the last five years and see the litter of a thousand cynical political ploys strewn across the path from 9/11/06. I am still saddened by the loss we all experienced five years ago; and I am doubly saddened at the crass way this tragedy has been used, over and over again, by the very people who were supposed to protect us. And to all the other losses we’ve had…soldiers barely out of childhood killed and maimed in Iraq…the innocent civilians lost there…victims of government neglect in New Orleans and the Gulf coast…thousands of people dropping back into poverty and hunger in our own country…Sudanese refuges fleeing from genocide…bombing victims in Madrid, London, Bali…for me, this is a day to remember it all. I never forget that the prime reason I fight this administration and engage in politics is for all those people, and the loved ones they’ve left behind. I fight for hope - a better future, one where flood victims are rescued before the levees break; armies are left in their barracks until they are truly needed to protect real freedoms; for dignity, and justice, and truth.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

–Emily Dickenson