Remember

Thirteen years ago.

I was driving to my first day of training for my new job in my orange 1979 Mercedes with the sunroof open. Listening to Oldies 101.7.

A glorious day.

Clear blue sky. The likes of which only comes after summer finally begins to relinquish its grasp and fall starts to cut in on the dance.

Delicious and crisp.

An announcement cuts in. A plane hit a building in New York.

Ooh. That's too bad. It must have been an accident.

Not even a blip on my radar of what was to come as I zipped down the road, a happy newlywed, on my way to a new job.

Then there was another announcement.

Another plane hit.

Oh Jesus.

I still can't fully grasp it.

I get to the training center and everyone is huddled in the break room. Glued to the 19" Panasonic.

Images like this assail my brain as I tried to reconcile the world of the day before to the world I was seeing play out in front of me.

I could go on and on. I could describe that day in perfect detail. How I thought the world was ending. How I watched the news coverage until I could watch no more. How the only thing, besides coverage, was on TV Land and it was the Brady Bunch (where the girls are grown up and sharing a house). How Garth was working late. How I sat on our garage-sale couch, practically catatonic.

And really, we all have those stories. That day brought us all to our knees. Drew us all closer to those we loved. 

We all said we wouldn't forget. And we haven't.

But life has a way of going on. It can seem callous that we can move past the tragedies that are as surely a part of life as is living it.

Yet, there is a beauty in the forgetting. A beauty in the meal after a funeral. A beauty in the new lives that are born into the world that don't even know of the tragedy, except for the stories.

Because all of those things offer the proof that life goes on.

Life goes on and you can't remember so much what it was like before, because all of those hurts remade us a bit, and we walk on. And we smile again. And we laugh. And we have new hurts that we don't think we can get through, but we do. And we remember. 

Down through the ages. Thousands of years. The groaning of the Israelites for their deliverance from Egypt. The crying out of those who trust in YAHWEH, calling out for deliverance, even now. The wailing of those who don't even know who they are summoning. "Come." Over and over. Thousands of times. Ten thousands of voices.  Millions of reasons. "Come. Save." The words encapsulating all the pain and questioning and hope in the midst of it. "Come. Save. Deliver." 

We were made for so much more than the most beautiful, perfect thing that this world has to offer, it is no wonder that our souls shy away from the pain.