A Lifetime
Sorry for the lack of blogging. Life just gets crazy, I guess. Today is eleven years since that day that changed the world. September 11th. Everyone who was old enough can cast their mind back and remember the moments of that day, where they were, what they were doing when those things happened. A friend mentioned today on Facebook that it felt like just yesterday. Yesterday.
No, not yesterday. For me, now, it feels like a lifetime ago. I can remember that day with great clarity, indeed, but its shock and misery pierced another me. A person who was not quite an adult. Someone on the brink. I do remember thinking to myself that day that things, the world, would never be the same. It is rare that one event can cause collective feelings of grief and loss and a different outlook on life.
But our lives are made up of more than just collective experience. I was trying to remember last night when 9/11 started to feel so far away. It was two years ago when a personal and family tragedy rocked our world and we knew that our lives would never be the same.
A couple years ago, Johnson & Johnson had a beautiful ad campaign that featured black and white footage of adorable babies and their parents and at the end it would say, "having a baby changes everything". Indeed. Two weeks ago, my two little girls, my first two babies, went back to school. Cecily in first grade, Cordelia in kindergarten. Their lives have existed only in a post 9/11 world. This changed world is their world. I looked at Cordelia last night and remarked to Nate, "She looks like a kindergartner." I know, of course she does! She is growing up, a lifetime away from what happened 11 years ago.
When Phineas died, our world changed. Our little family was irrevocably different. I stressed and worried about imposing grief on my daughters' young souls. And yet, we are coming through it, bit by bit. But even beyond our family tempest, there has been another lifetime. Freddie was born into a world where 9/11 and his brother's death were just part of the fabric of life. He officially went to nursery on Sunday and again I was just amazed at how quickly things pass.
It is strange to look back at such a tragic and life changing event, back when you were a different person, because really, who is the same after 11 years? It feels like looking into a vision of the past, like in Harry Potter, looking into the pensieve where your mind has stored your experience of events. Each person's would be different, but when you stop and look, you are different and the world is too. But then it is okay. New life springs forth after tragedy and destruction, new lifetimes always being built. This does not diminish what has been lost, only strengthens the knowledge of what should be kept and treasured. Those people and experiences and little lifetimes. The world can be better and not worse because of what happened.
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