A young girl clutches the badge of a firefighter father who she has never met. A widow touches the name of her spouse enscribed in stone, the only resting place he will ever know. A father stares out an an empty field, knowing he will never walk his daughter down the aisle.
This past weekend was filled with images like these and so many others as the nation remembered the events hat occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.
If you have a moment and are ready for an emotional blow to your gut, watch a video that doesn't have impressive voiceovers or dramatic music. Instead, find one like "How the Day Unfolded" on CNN's website. No gimmicks. No interviews years later. Just the recordings of what CNN played throughout the morning as events unfolded, the facts garbled and the outcome unclear.
In watching this video and others like it, viewers are taken back to that day, that Tuesday morning when al-Qaida was a name most Americans didn't know and terrorism hadn't been seen in the United States since the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995. The newness and horror of it all is felt, just as it was that morning, and we are reminded of the sense of pure disbelief, sorrow and fear.
Ten years later, it's easy to think of Sept. 11 as the day that changed the political and economic policies of the U.S. It's easy to think of it as the turning point in many Americans' feelings toward Muslims. And it's easy to think of it as the day that made getting around an airport more difficult. This systematic desensitization to Sept. 11 is a tragedy in itself, and other dramatic events in American history have seen the same decline in reverence.
To many, Pearl Harbor is the setting of epic war movies. Gettysburg is that place your parents take you on a road-trip vacation. The Alamo is the building they show when previewing a Texas-based sporting event.
This is a tragedy in itself.
Attacks and battles should not be remembered solely for the effects they had or how they altered our way of life. They should be spoken about in respectful tones, with due sorrow and regret for those lives lost.
In the case of Sept. 11, the desensitization doesn't just apply to that day and how we mark its anniversary. The concept of terrorism, once so dramatic and epic in scale, is now a common term in our national conversation. The thought of an underwear bomb is humorous rather than alarming. A car bomb plot in Times Square becomes an amusement as the usual bustling cityscape is abandoned. Headlines about terror plots are as common as stories about people who are angry at Mel Gibson.
As a population, we are terrified and yet foolishly brave at the same time. Terror threats are real and another Sept. 11 could happen. We should not treat them as a source of jokes or as an annoyance distracting us from more entertaining stories.
And while we should not live in fear, we should live with the knowledge that tragedy struck just 10 years ago and can occur again. When we are in our later years, looking back at a life vastly changed by a single day when we were in elementary or middle school, college-aged students may talk about Sept. 11 the way we talk about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — like a distant memory, with no connection to current life.
We would do well to remember now that it is our responsibility to make sure the respect associated with Sept. 11 is just as real then as it is now, to truly honor those lost in the attacks and since. If not, we do those victims a dishonor and our country a disservice.