Losing Stuff

Losing Stuff

September 12, 2006

Somewhere in this house is a small picture that is very important to me, but right now, I can’t find it. It’s got to be here, unless, God forbid, I accidentally threw it away. I have looked in all the logical places, to no avail. My frustration level is at an all-time high, because it was just a few weeks ago that I ran across the picture and set it aside to do something special with it. And now I have no idea where it is. I do things like that all the time, especially since turning fifty, and I am thoroughly disgusted with myself.

What is so special about this picture? It is a picture of me, taken about twenty years ago, on a boat in New York Harbor. Directly behind me, are the twin towers of the World Trade Center. We, America, lost the actual buildings five years ago, and now I’ve lost them again in my picture.

Losing stuff. That is what this five-year anniversary of September 11th is all about. As Americans, we still feel a profound sense of sadness over all that was lost that infamous day.
I still cannot believe those two iconic buildings are gone, along with the lives of all those people who worked inside them. When I see present-day pictures of the New York skyline, my mind mentally fills in the gap with images of those two towers standing proudly and so prominently over America’s largest city, just as the memorial lights do on the anniversary of the tragedy, shining high up into the night. The World Trade Center was symbolic, standing for American enterprise, prosperity, and opportunity. And that is why it was attacked.

We lost so much on that day – our innocence, our illusion of safety, our sense of security.
How painful it was to realize that we Americans are not universally loved and respected, that there are those who hate us and everything we stand for.

We lost heroes on that day - the passengers on Flight 93 who were determined that no other innocents would be killed, and the firemen who didn’t even think about rushing into the burning buildings to save lives. Then there were the lesser known heroes, the moms and dads that just went to work every dayto take care of their families.

We continue to lose. In the five years since the attack, it seems we’ve lost even more respect from other nations. And we’ve lost soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. We’ve lost the unity that was our only comfort in the dark days following the attack, the feeling that had members of Congress joining together to sing “God Bless America” on the steps of the United States Capitol. We’ve lost some of our liberty to move about freely because of security concerns. Those same concerns have also led to a necessary loss of privacy. The money lost in waging this war on terrorism is beyond our comprehension. Many are beginning to feel that we are losing the war itself.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, our world changed. The world we grew up in, the world that we knew, was suddenly gone, and we can never get it back. That is what we lost. I guess my picture is a pretty small thing compared to that, but even so, I really, really want it back.