9/11

Two years ago I was able to be in New York. We got to go to Ground Zero, but it was under construction. It was a neat experience being in NY on the 9/11. We had an experience with a man in the subway who had lost his father on 9/11. My brother wrote about it on his blog and I just wanted to share it with my followers:

New York was awesome, everything I expected and more. My family and I had an experience on 9/11 in a New York subway that I don't think any of us will ever forget.

We had just gotten on the subway when a doo-wop group was singing and selling a CD in our portion of the subway. They finished singing and because it was 9/11 in NYC they expressed their condolences to anyone who may had lost someone 8 years ago. They then went on to say it was their personal belief that it was our ex-president's fault and they hold him directly responsible. The last part kind of ruined what could have been a beautiful moment for me. They made their expression political when that wasn't what I wanted to be feeling that day.

After they left I heard a man a few feet away telling another person that they were "idiots". A few moments later my sister expressed her feelings of how she thought his last comment ruined the moment (and rightfully so). A man sitting next to us overheard my sister's comment and interrupted our conversation stating that the man meant well. I was taken back at first but he went on saying "I reacted the same way you did, but he meant well". He then went on to tell us that he had lost someone that day eight years ago. He told us that he went to work today but couldn't finish and asked to be excused. It was his father that he lost; he said he was done crying, but the pain was still there and seemed to surface every time 9/11 comes around.

He wasn't a man that you would notice walking down the streets of New York. He wasn't even a man I would have noticed sitting right beside me on the subway had he not said something to us. He wasn't eloquent in his speech, he wasn't well dressed, he wasn't even clean shaven. But he taught me a lesson that no well groomed, rich politician ever could. 9/11 isn't about right or wrong, it isn't about conspiracy theories, it isn't about conservatives or liberals...it is about lives lost. It is about living in a world where evil things can happen, and do. And the consequences of this evil, is pain. It's also about people, real people. People who have died, and their surviving family and kin. This man, I don't even know his name, doesn't let the politics get to him, because for him, 9/11 is about his father...a father lost.

That man I met on a New York subway will forever have changed the way I feel about 9/11. He made it real for me in a way I never felt before. I shook his hand as I exited the subway, but what I really wanted was a hug. What I think he knows better than any of us, is that he has a country standing behind him who also, in a much smaller way, feels his pain.