I found an old family photo album yesterday that was about 21 years old, which means I was about ten when most of the pictures were taken.  The album depicted vacations, birthdays and holidays from my youth.  In almost every picture, we were smiling.  It's neat.  And then, I flipped the page and saw The Picture. 

Right there, in between pictures of my tenth birthday, and Christmas pictures at my childhood vacation home (one of my favorite Christmases ever) there was a snapshot of the New York skyline, circa 1981.  It's faded with age, but still clear.  I think my father snapped it from a ferry in the harbor.  That's the picture I chose to post today. 

It's odd…it's one of the few pictures in the album that doesn't have people in it.  I cried when I looked at that picture, and I cry when I think of it.  I cry for the loss of life, and I cry for those of us left behind, who have to know the evil that mankind is capable of inflicting upon himself.  God help us all.

So here we are.  September 11.  One year since we learned that even though we lived in the US, we were not immune to terror, even on our own soil.

For me, this anniversary is more difficult than the actual event.  I was of course upset by the Attacks, but in many ways, I hadn't fully processed the information.  Perhaps the fact that the planes hitting, and subsequent collapse of the building looked so much like a special effect from hell, like something out of Industrial Light + Magic's studio, that it didn't seem real to me.

How COULD it seem real?  That's a bizarre thing, isn't it, to think that someone would cause such suffering on purpose?  For someone who thinks of himself as a very worldly person, I am totally naïve about such things.  I have always functioned with the assumption that people are basically good.  I know that's not always the case, but I'm always a little surprised when someone is not good and honest.  I suppose we can blame my idyllic suburban upbringing for this.

So for me, anger and frustration began to set in as I began to read people's personal accounts of what happened.  Sarah Bunting's For Thou Art With Us stands out as one of the most amazing personal accounts I've read, but of course, the media was full of them.

I suppose that I protected myself from the pain by not dealing with it.  By the time I had accepted what had happened, the media was on to other things, like a War in Afghanistan, and the uninspired “Where's Osama?” stories.  Of course, Enron and their ilk shifted our focus for a bit, and then this summer, everybody seemed concerned with a lot of missing children.

So now, every media outlet is rehashing the Attacks, and the images bother me.  A lot.  I wept as I read the Newsweek Special Edition that hit the newsstands last week.  The loss is so… vivid and clear to me.  I think I'll do a lot of crying in the next few days.  Now, it's real… and it hits me in unexpected ways.

Bless the people who lost loved ones.  Bless the people whose lives where shattered.  Bless those of us who felt so helpless, watching the Attacks unfold thousands of mile from anywhere where we could make a difference.  Bless those of us who made a difference anyway.  The triumph of the human spirit has been show to us all, and we are humbled by it.  Please, let us never forget the lessons learned.

ONE YEAR AGO