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Mon. Sep 11, 2006

Five Years Ago

Five years ago, we weren’t thinking about the political implications of the day. Five years ago, we had not yet fully divided ourselves into red and blue. Five years ago, we had no conception such a day could be turned into a “docu-drama.”

Five years ago today, the only thing we felt was the pain of loss. For that day, even if only for a minute, millions of us felt that we might just have easily been one of the thousands of families suffering a loss … just because a loved one went to work. Just because a loved one got on the wrong plane. It was a most basic commonality, a shared empathy that far outweighed any of the usual petty divisions among us.

Five years later, today should be like that as well. It should be about the nearly 3,000 lives harshly ended, and the families they left behind. If we gave each of them just one day, we’d only have gotten through 1,825 of those lost by now.

In 2002, I did my best to give at least one of them a day of some sort, and that’s the best thing I know to leave you with today: “I’m OK, I’m with the firemen”: In Memory of Bill Biggart.