9/11

Today is the 12th day of September 2009. Yesterday marked the eighth anniversary of the terrible events of 9/11. I wonder how many took a moment to stop and remember: where were you when you heard the news? what did you do? were you struck by the horror of the situation? did you sit, as I did, in front of your tv and watch in shock as the twin towers game down? It was a surreal moment for me, it felt like I watched a horror movie and yet some part of my brain insisted in telling me that this was really happening as I was watching. Did you sit in shock as I did, and watch people choose to jump and plummet to their deaths? Do you remember in gripping detail as I do or have you chosen to forget those images and remember in a general sense the events of 9/11.

we need to remember. we need to relive and remember to feel the horror of what we felt that day. We need to...for a number of reasons....we need to remember in order to honour all the innocent victims, the moms and dads, the children, the aunts, uncles and cousins, the husbands and wives, who through no choice of their own were innocent bystanders and had their lives taken from them in the most brutal of ways.

we need to remember in order to honor the ones left behind, the now childless parents, who will never understand the kind of brutality that took their mommy and daddy from them. we need to honor the parents who have now outlived their children-every parent's nightmare. we need to remember to honor the young lovers who had their fiancees and dreams taken from them in one fell swoop. we need to honor the grandparents whose grandchildren will never again sit at the knees of gramma and grampa and hear the stories of back in the day.

we need to remember to honor the emergency personnel-the paramedics, the firefighters, the police force who risked their lives. Some lost their lives that day in the line of duty as they did all they could to save those in the towers and fight against the unseen enemy for at that time, as well all watched the twin towers blow up and fall, we knew not whom we were fighting. many emergency personnel did not give a thought for their own lives that day but rather went into burning and falling buildings in order to save their fellow man.

for you can guarantee, every year on 9/11 the children remember, the parents remember, aunts, uncles, cousins friends grandparents remember. you can guarantee each of the emergency personnel who fought that day and lost their brothers and sisters in the battle DO remember. they remember the horror of those events and we too MUST remember.

history is doomed to repeat when we start to forget so as we pass another anniversary of 9/11 please instead of giving a passing thought to that day, instead of glossing over it with a casual "oh ya, its 9/11 today," force yourself to once again feel the horror that you felt that day and hold your loved ones close, thanking our Lord that it was not you!!!!!

Honour our brothers and sisters who lost their lives that day by remembering and thus not allowing this to occur in our world again. For that day, we no longer remained canadians and americans...on that day we became family...brothers and sisters who lost one of our own.