Remembering.
Two days
ago, I received a tweet from a fan named Scott Cleere who told me that he
missed me on AGT and that he could sure use a laugh on Sunday (today) because
it wouldn’t be a good day for him. At the time I didn’t piece the dates
together and I simply thanked him. Yesterday, he clarified his first tweet by
telling me that his Dad, James, had been lost in the towers and that no remains
had ever been recovered.
Until
yesterday, I had only known one other person lost on that horrible day. But
like all of us who remember it, all of those families and victims came out of
the rubble and found an indelibly etched place in our hearts and psyche.
We shared their pain and offered our prayers and love to them in the hope that
somehow, however futile, we could ease their broken hearts.
I don’t know
Scott, but I do. I can’t feel what he feels, but I try. After fifteen years, I
still can’t watch the memorial without crying and wondering how anyone could
hate that much.
Scott, I
wish I could say something to make you laugh away your pain, but there is
nothing in my heart today to enable me to do so. In the days which will follow,
that will change of course, but for now, no, there is no laughter.
When I think
back to those horrible days, the one bright spot in it all, was the sense of
unity we shared. Our collective family had been attacked and for perhaps the
first time since Pearl Harbor, we stood as one people, one nation-indivisible. I
wish I could say that is the case today, but I can’t. But that is for another
discussion on another day. For now, my heart and thoughts are with the Cleere
family and all the others who lost a loved one.
The rubble
is gone. The dust has settled. The memorials are built. History has been
written. If we extract one thing from it all, let it be that the love and
kinship we felt for one another in the aftermath prevails once again. That’s
what I wish for Scott Cleere, his family, and the world.
