Even Still

I have so much to do. The paint. The carpet cleaning. The packing. My life is so busy these days. I am easily in a tizzy at the smallest of things. I sit down in a rare moment of silence and it occurs to me that today is 9/11. Oh my. How sad that I have not acknowledged this. If anyone were around, I may have blushed with embarrassment. As though I had forgotten a friend's birthday. Or worse than that, I forgotten the anniversary of a death. In all honesty, I feel my mind has a mechanism that has blocked that day out. Like the people who remember something really bad that happened to them years after the fact. No, I didn't know anyone there. Thankfully. I just remember it. It was an earth shattering day. So bizarre. So unreal. I was a senior in college. At my internship. Everyone was confused and bewildered. Everyone rushing to get gas. Oh, the lines for gas! Then, the memorial services. The prayers. The questions. The songs. For me, I remember feeling so much anger. Hatred. So much so, that I knew it was not right. It was just so hard to fathom. Everyone was so sad that day. So somber. And the next and the next. Somehow, it was able to be tucked away. I was impressed at our resilience. I still can't watch, hear or think of that day without a serious heaviness and many tears. I just can't go there. I turned on my dvr'd Oprah. Yup. Sure enough, a memorial. With victim's children. Little kids now teens. Babies now talking. Kids who are clearly all grown up in more ways than one. Couldn't do it. Turned it off. Came to write about it instead.
Isn't life so precious. Aren't we all a gift? Everything is a gift. The Lord blessed us all with life. With love. With children. With tragedy, strangely. How we come out of tragedy is a gift, if allowed. So tonight, I remember those I never knew. I say a prayer for their loved ones. I say a prayer for our great nation, though sometimes broken and lost, this country is good. This country is free. We are one nation under God. Indivisable.