In Memory

The seventh anniversary of 9/11 was last week. It's not that I forgot. I purposely waited to post. I wanted to really think about what it means to me. You know, beyond the heightened security and general inconvenience of it all. It's not that I'm annoyed by these things, it's that I'm annoyed by the fact that it seems many of my fellow Americans have forgotten the reason why we are abiding by new rules and regulations.
I am not nearly old enough to remember Pearl Harbor, but I remember every year when it comes and goes. I am ashamed to say, it's not because of a relative's death, a military attachment, a reverance for what those men stood for, the turning point in our country's history that day. No, it's because it happens to coincide with the day I met my husband. Yeah. And how many other great, historical dates come and go without pause from the people of this great country and our busy lifestyle? Hundreds, if not thousands.
Then I wonder...how long will it be before I completely forget? How many years will go by before that day in Two-Thousand-Something that 9/11 comes and goes and I don't even think once about the significance of the date and what transpired in 2001? It saddens me to think that what we experienced, what we grieved over, and what took me weeks and months to stop thinking about every day may now be put into a text book and memorized without passion and kids will learn about it with even less passion and once the test is over, it will be promptly forgotten.
I don't have an eloquent way of closing this post. "Never Forget" is both cliche and unrealistic. To say I'm saddened both by the events and by the fact that it's become just another day is both cliche and maybe a bit naive. Any trauma that we experience will eventually heal. But healing is not forgetting.