It goes without saying that this day and perhaps the days leading up to and just after are particularly solemn and somber. It was a horrific day, one that at 23, I will never forget. While I did not know anyone directly affected or killed, it made me push aside old wounds and grudges and reach out to friends I hadn't seen or spoken to in years. I had to know they were OK. After all, I had loved and adored them in a previous time and always would...we just had falling outs.
It clinched a year of personal loss though for me -- between a relationship with a friend/beau that I had loved and adored falling apart to my grandfather passing away to handling a layoff at my first job out of school, to this -- it was a beat you down kind of year.
It would take me a while before I felt better about myself, my life, my relationships, my choices, and before I was really able to move forward in a positive way. I think about that this week and of course all the people who were touched personally by those attacks 10 years ago.
10 years makes you think...a decade. Wow. So much has changed and yet so much has not. I am reminded of a quote I saw on the wall in the Spy Museum. I can't recall it verbatim or who said it but it was from 1954 in the height of the Cold War and was something to the effect that security comes at a price and often that means inconvenience. I can relate to that.
I found a little hope in a performance I saw that day. A colleague, friend and client, Sebastienne Mundheim of White Box Theatre, created a beautiful performance - Paris Wheels and the Ready Maids - originally for PIFA this past April but remounted it for the Philly Fringe. I had helped Sebastienne with the marketing of the performance and Sunday Mitch and I went to see the show at Crane Arts Old School. It was so beautifully created and told - the lyrical storytelling, the puppetry, the story of Henri Rousseau and his quest for beauty in France while his world was being destroyed around him. It was a story of hope and I left feeling honored to have seen it that day.
Adding to the sadness of the week is news of a little girl, a 5 year old girl from Phoenixville, PA who lost her life this Sunday, 9/11 of all days, to brain cancer. There had been some FB feeds here and there this summer but it wasn't to the point where it cluttered my feed. I didn't really pay much attention. The other day several friends had posted about this child and I clicked through not expecting to read what I did. Her father - god bless him - blogged about the entire experience. His baby girl had lost her battle just two days before and he and his wife and other daughters were grief stricken. I can't post the link to it here because it's just too much. I was a total wreck reading it. I feel badly that I was in my own world this summer and unaware of something so close to home. My donation, late as it is, I hope helps with their medical bills. But mostly, I heeded his advice. I stopped work Monday at 4:30, I went to M's daycare and got him and while we didn't do anything special, we were just together. We've been praying for this family nightly. Today are the services and I pray for her and her family. I can't pretend to know what they are going through...just that it is a nightmare. Every parent's nightmare. The sort of thing that destroys people and families and I hope the Lord does something in this hour of need.
Update: On my way to the Phillies game last night, about 7pm, dad and I were driving north on 95 and out of nowhere a huge double rainbow spread clear across the sky. Many moons ago someone told me a rainbow was a sign of God's love. Remembering the last line I had written here just before I left, thinking about that little girl and family, I sure hope they saw it.
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