12 years have passed. 12 years since a day that I – then a
four-year-old preschooler – can no longer remember.
12 years since one of the most horrific
days in United States history. September 11, 2001: dual terrorist attacks on New York City’s
Twin Towers. Including first respondents, 3,000 beautiful lives were taken in a
single day.
Try to imagine the pain. One second, you’re
maybe scheduling a meeting for tomorrow, or deciding what you will have for
lunch. Then, in next second, you realize there will be no meeting tomorrow.
Knowing you are going to die, fighting to breathe for as long as you can
handle.
No longer are you making the decision on
what to eat for lunch, instead you are choosing death by suffocation, sitting
in your cubicle; or death by suicide, falling to a fast and painless
death.
There are no options. No goodbye to your
family. For most there's no last, "I love you." Those dreams you have
worked your entire life to achieve --
vanished. This is the end of the line.
Now imagine the pain of those families of those whose lives were
taken. Those families who are still suffering
from their losses – 12 years later. Children who never said their last
goodbyes to their parent. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles,
grandparents who will never again witness that light in their life.
Now imagine the pain of those 3,000 helpless
civilians and multiply that by 40. Take America’s pain in that one day and
in the coming years, and repeat that same loss, same sorrow, day after day.
Anywhere between 114,000 and 125,000 Middle-Eastern civilians have
been killed by Americans in those 12 years following 9/11.
Over 100,000 civilians have faced death or death situations like
the many people did on September 11. Ordinary people, living everyday lives; scheduling
a meeting, maybe wondering what they would have for lunch later on in the day.
Yet those people – with the same hurt, their families feeling the
same sorrow that us Americans have felt – have gone unrecognized in America. We
have become so hung up and so full of sorrow for the 3,000 people – people,
just like the over 100,000 – who died here, that we don’t stop to think about
that same hurt that is still happening in the Middle East.
This is a day that we should not only pray for those who lost
loved ones in America on September 11, but those who have lost loved ones as a
result of America’s War on Terrorism. And pray that these unnoticed deaths may
become common knowledge – much like September 11 -- and come to a stop.
