Remembering September 11

September 11th always reminds me of my brother.  After realizing what was happening, after calling my mother as I drove home from work to get my TV to bring back to work, after watching the towers fall with my co-workers, I called my brother.  I explained to him how I felt like life was changing in a dramatic way and everything was going to be different.  I told him how nervous I was about that.  He told me that my reaction was normal, but things weren't going to change as much as I thought.  And he was right.  I was envisioning nuclear war and loss of family due to breakdown of communications systems and radiation zones.  I was envisioning a police state.

Even with all the TV and media hype, the revoking of some of our civil rights, the added security at airports and having to learn a new way of traveling, September 11, 2001 has not effected me in any way as much as losing my brother to cancer.

September 11 always brings the beginning of a cycle of remembrance for me.  My Sneetch (feline companion for 12 years) died on September 19, 2005.  Hurricane Wilma, the most intense tropical cyclone to ever be recorded in the Atlantic Basin, rolled through on October24, 2005. (Incidentally, my Father's birthday.) My brother Mike finally went to the doctor for abdominal pain he'd been having for weeks at the beginning of November.  He was in the hospital on November 11, 2005, his 43rd birthday.  He was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma on November 21, 2005.  That was the day that changed my life in a most dramatic way.

While I feel a little guilty not buying into the hype the media has poured onto us for the last week, I do feel compassion for those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001.  Their loss is no different than mine.  It still leaves a cavity in their hearts as I have in mine.We will all fill the holes with memories and for a while that will make it better.  Then the holes will appear again, we will remember and feel the pain.  Then we will fill the cavities again with love.  My hope is that all of that love will spill over and fill the hearts of those who find it hard to be open minded, and accepting of people's differences.  My hope is that LOVE, a Divine Truth, will win.

 
            Mike with The Sneetch: Two friends in Heaven