9-10, 9-11, or 9-12 – The Loss is Never Undone

Many people have posted about 9-12 this week, and missing the unity we all shared on that day. I get it. On every side (and there are more than two sides), we are exhausted by the constant fighting, disunity, and attacks.

Everyone who posts about 9-12 insists they would never want to live through another 9-11, and I’m not writing this to call them out. They are making an understandable and honest point.

But at what cost did that feeling of unity come? Will we find unity again without the shedding of so much blood?

My mind just keeps going to all of those for whom all the lasts were on 9-10, and 9-12, 9-15, and 10-1, were just as brutal as 9-11 because the loss never ended; those who were just getting to the hardest days a year or two after 9-11, and some days without warning feel the pain of 9-11 in a way the rest of the world thinks of with nostalgia.

I don’t fault those who are looking back and secretly feeling nostalgic. I don’t want others to feel the real pain of loss. But we should all take a moment and remember how many fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, husbands and wives are gone.

For anyone directly touched, 9-12 was not one ounce easier than 9-11. Even after years have passed, and the pain has changed, not one person who died on 9-11 has come back to life, not one person has been replaced, the pain will never be undone.