Painful Reflections

Today is a sad day for so many people. Emotions come rushing back especially for those personally affected by the events of 9.11.01. Every single moment of this day twelve years ago they feel again as the seconds tick off the clock. That's what grief does, it reminds you. Not that they need a reminder, every day without them does that.

There were years and years and years that I relived the days leading up to and after my daughter's birth and death. It started October 27 until November 4. As the years have passed, I don't have that deep craving to relive those moments any more. I remember but not like before when I recreated the timeline in my mind over and over. Many people feel like I "dwell" on the death of my children, that if I don't think about it so much, it would just go away. Obviously those people have never lost someone so ingrained in their soul. For the record, I do not DWELL, I remember!

I think the same could be said of today. I've seen the comments. Why do they replay these tragedies every year? Why do these people go there and read names every year? These same people don't get it. Remember, these people say these things because YOUR grief is uncomfortable to THEM. They are making your loss about them and not about the person or child gone, as it should be. Don't let them take the voice of your loved one out of your mouth!

They are reading off the names as I type this. This is real for them. It is fresh. It is important that they know their loved one is not forgotten. Same for the parents of a baby no one ever got to meet. Bottom line, all these were lives, even the briefest if that's a word. They were all loved and they all deserve to be remembered and respected.

It hurts to feel that pain again, in that way, like it was yesterday. But you know what that pain does for me? It makes me remember. I will watch today and I will remember. I will pray for those who are left behind. I will pray for them because I know they will never be whole again until they are reunited. That doesn't mean they, or I, can't be happy, it just means there's a hole that used to be filled with a special love. No measure of happiness and joy can fill that hole, it is reserved for the one it once belonged to. So I will force myself to feel the pain of loss and remember that love. I would rather endure the pain of grief than to forget altogether.

I challenge those that think my grief is uncomfortable. Those that can't stand to watch yet another time as those airplanes crash. Those that choose to think this is just another day. Look on. Remember. Those names are people, real people, that touched the lives of others. That daughter of mine that very very few got to meet, she was a real person too, and it is in her death that she touches other's lives. I didn't know any of those people personally but I know them now, through the stories their loved ones tell, they live on in death too and they have touched my life. God bless them all that have gone before, you are not forgotten.