“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

— C.S. Lewis

Ten years ago today, the world was shaken by an act of terrorism.  Ten years ago today, fear was planted in the hearts of countless people.  Ten years later, we still carry the chill of the events that forever changed our lives.

I am someone who lives in the present.  Often I would be hard-pressed to tell you what I had for breakfast yesterday, and I sometimes wonder if I could pass the memory tests given to my elderly mother to assess her level of dementia; but I can tell you all about September 11, 2001.  It is forever etched in my mind.  Traumatic events are like acid.  They leave their marks on us, burned into our psyches and hiding in the recesses of our memories.  When a day comes to remember our grief, it can feel as fresh and painful as it was at the time we first were hurt.  Today we remember.

Last week I attended a meeting of the booster club for my granddaughter’s high school basketball team.  We always meet in the same room, Room 353, in the school I attended many years ago.  Room 353.  Every time we meet, I am taken back to a day long ago.  I was sitting in that very room on November 22, 1963 when an announcement came through the P.A. system informing us that President Kennedy had been shot.  We were still in Room 353 when our teacher told us, with tears in his eyes, that the president was dead.  Every time I enter that room and take my seat for a meeting, I remember that day nearly forty-eight years ago.  It was a day that marked one of my first life-altering brushes with grief and with the fear that accompanies it.  My view of the world was never quite the same after that day, and the memory is seared in my mind and my heart — a memory that reminds me that life may not always be predictable, safe, or friendly.

On September 11, 2001, I did something unusual.  I am not a big fan of daytime television; but on that day, I had a lot of ironing to do.  I had let it accumulate, and I made up my mind that I would finish the job.  I set up my ironing board, laid the garments across the arm of the sofa, and turned on Good Morning America to distract me from the task at hand.  When I clicked the button on the remote, a picture on the screen showed a tall building with smoke billowing from windows on the upper levels.  My first impression was that I was watching a trailer for some new disaster movie that was being advertised.  I looked away, adjusting a shirt on the ironing board and waiting for the commercial to end.  It didn’t end, and soon I realized that the commentary was not a commercial.  What I was seeing on the screen was live footage of an unfolding event that would change the way we see our world.  As I watched in horror, another plane slammed into the World Trade Center.  There was no room for denial any more.  This was real; and there were innocent people inside those burning buildings.

It is said that there are five stages of grief; and I think that we, as a nation, were hustled through most of them in one day back in 2011.  First the denial — maybe this is a movie trailer — but that was soon dispelled.  Anger followed.  Who would do such a thing?  We can understand the flaw of human nature to seek revenge on someone who has hurt us, but who seeks revenge on total strangers?  Bargaining.  In spite of the dreadful pictures that unfolded right before our eyes, there was a need to believe that rescue workers would be able to evacuate the people who were trapped.  We expected to see queues of office workers walking to safety the way we all were taught to behave in fire drills as early as elementary school.  We expected to see helicopters land on the roof and pull folks from upper floors to safety.  We knew that if people did the right things in a crisis that all would be well.  We had been taught these things again and again.  And then the buildings collapsed.  The feeling of hopelessness that slammed into us at that moment stilled our bargaining.  All that followed was silence — and fear.  As the story of 9/11 continued to unfold, we heard of other attacks, of another crashed plane with no survivors; and the grief that was etched into our souls that day spelled, “fear.”

The final stage of grief is acceptance.  Ten years later, the reality of that day is something we need to accept as being real.  Still, there is no closure for our grief and no resolution for the fear that stays with us.  We walk with fear as a constant companion, because we now know that in addition to the plight of simply being human and mortal, we must guard against others who would randomly take the lives of innocent people.

But fear is not the end of the story.  When we are afraid, we can choose to handle our fear in two ways.  We can deny it, suppress it, become angry at everyone, angry at the vulnerability of our existence, angry at a God who would allow such suffering; or we can choose to grow courageous and strong and to stand in the face of our fear.  For every loss on that horrible day, we soon began to learn of a dozen acts of courage.  We discovered that 9/11 was not only about learning that we are vulnerable.  It also was about learning the depth of our courage and strength to preserve the life that so many had taken from them on that day.

Ten years later, I still remember watching those images as I ironed my shirts.  Ten years later, I still bristle at standing in lines and shedding my shoes and being xrayed as I travel by air.  Ten years later, I still feel the ache of our loss of innocence.  Ten years later, I still watch many folks act out their fear by seeing all muslims as terrorists.  The healing will go on forever.  I still find myself in a time warp each time I return to Room 353.  Ironing now has become an act of remembrance.  It is important that we remember.  It is important that we honor those who lost their lives.  It is important that we learn to stand courageously in the face of our fear.  Only then can we finally heal.