Tuesday’s Terrorist Attack

   This column was originally written on Sept. 12, 2001—the day after the 9-11 Attacks.

   You’re watching TV when suddenly the tall building, struck earlier in its upper floors by a plane, billowing with fire and smoke, collapses, comes tumbling down.  And you realize that in those moments hundreds of people who had been working in or were visiting that World Trade Center tower, perished.  As did many of the fireman and police officers who were attempting to evacuate the building. 

   You watch other fireman, equipped in their Darth Vader like helmets, heading towards that building the smoke and debris, and then awhile later you realize some of them may have died at that very instant in their rescue effort.

    You see the distant image of people falling or jumping from the upper levels, trapped in those heights by the fire and smoke below; you listen to the eyewitness accounts of those on the ground who watched the horrifying sight; a real life repetition of the haunting scenes from the old movie “Towering Inferno.”

   You see, over and over, the scene caught on film of the airliner filled with passengers deliberately being crashed into the second tower of the New York City landmark, several minutes after the other tower had been struck.  And, in seeing that, you think of the horror and grief being felt by the families of these helpless passengers.  A husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter, brother or sister witnessing the moment their loved one was murdered. 

    You see the wrecked portion of the Pentagon, not nearly as devastating a sight as those at the World Trade Center, yet you realize (and remind yourself) that dozens of people, loved and cherished by others, were crushed under the weight of concrete and steel or incinerated by the fire.

    You see the crater in the otherwise scenic Pennsylvania countryside and near that the pieces of wreckage, including human remains, are no larger than telephone book.  And you wonder if, in this case, unlike the other three, whether the passengers were able to thwart the hijackers, mission and, even at the loss of their own lives, and either knowingly or unknowingly, save many others.

    You think, as you see these and other televised images and reports, of all your fellow countrymen and women who went to work on a seemingly normal Tuesday morning or climbed aboard a seemingly routine flight to the West Coast and – due to a cold-blooded act of malice, of calculated terrorism – are suddenly gone, and it’s almost beyond belief. 

   Over the course of the day and evening you see and hear eyewitness accounts, the reactions of government leaders, and the speculation of terrorism experts. 

   The power and immediacy of the televised images were gripping.  The emotions brought on by these assorted events, watched either as they were occurring or in re-televised film footage, were overwhelming and (finally) numbing. 

    At the evening’s end, there were the repeated images, now somehow familiar, and the continuous interviews with different leaders and experts with their assorted speculations.  Tired, the moment came to turn off the TV and head for bed.  In the end, life goes on. 

    These words, written on the morning after, composed in a small Michigan town nearly a thousand miles away from the sites of carnage, with the mind still worn out as if suffering from an emotional hangover, are admittedly small and insignificant in comparison to what occurred and to what most of the nation has seen on TV.

    Yet, in the long haul, such offerings of comfort, of explanation, of sharing and empathy and grief allow us to go beyond the images of destruction, to work past the numbness of large-scale death, and begin to reflect and sort out. 

    They come from our President and other government leaders, from pastors and priests, from counselors and teachers, from newspaper columnists and editorials, and from each other.  They’re uttered on radio and TV, in newspapers, at church, at where we work, at the coffee shop, and across the dinner table.

    Nearly all of us, at some time in our lives have experiences personal loss – just as so many family members and friends of those killed by Tuesday’s acts of terrorism are now suffering. 

    And our nation, both in earlier times and in more recent years, has collectively experienced other tragic events, although this one is unique.  Ultimately in most cases, we move on (whether the grief is personal or national), resume our normal everyday lives because there is no other direction to take but forward towards tomorrow.  The words, written or spoken, help to heal the wounds and propel us on.

    There are, of course dramatic events, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor nearly 60 years ago and our entry into World War II, that from historical perspective fundamentally alter or shatter those routines, that daily business, or heretofore normal lives.  Whether these deeds of terrorism, described by President Bush and others as an act of war against America and Americans, a war launched by people who do not distinguish between civilians and soldiers, is one of those fundamentally-altering events remains to be seen.

Certainly it fits that description for those who have lost loved ones.

    Midway through writing this, I remembered the famous letter Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1864 to Mrs. Bixley of Massachusetts, whose five sons were reported killed in battle.  As it turned out, only two of the woman’s sons died in action, but of course her suffering was no less profound. 

    “I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming,” Lincoln wrote. “But I cannot refrain from tendering to the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.” 

     “I pray,” he continued, “that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid as costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.” 

    In re-reading the letter, I can’t believe that Mrs. Bixley found such comforting sentiments, this expression of empathy to be weak and fruitless.  As a nation and as fellow countrymen and human beings, we share the sorrow of those more directly hurt and devastated by Tuesday’s tragic events.  We offer our sympathy as best we can. 

    I hope, even in the face of calculated terror, and the images of its aftermath, that such words as these, offered by so many across our land, prove more enduring than the madness that inspired them.”