ELEGIAC : Relating to the mourning or remembering of the dead, expressing sorrow.
I’m pretty sure that everyone remembers where they were on September 11, 2001.
The moment is sealed into your memory, into a place that can be recalled in a single heartbeat. I can still feel, see and smell the moment. I was in Hull, England, whiling the day away. Turning the corner, a bright light caught my eye as I passed an electronics store on one of the small streets, witnessing the blast and then the Towers going down. Smoke.... Smoke, the flurry of all that were near. Surely this is the latest movie trailer, I thought ... but the coverage was too real for that; my fears were mounting. After several minutes of staring, watching the same scene over and over ... I realized this has happened, this HAS really happened. No movie, no wild, sick imagination from some Hollywood somebody trying to top the latest disaster film. C’est absolument vrai.
So far in my life, I have been fortunate to have never felt the lag of time that occurs when disaster envelopes you. I was suspended in that repeated scene, not knowing what to do. I was far from home, and seeing disaster around every corner. I blanked as to my next move.
Then the thoughts of those; those thousands , millions of people whose lives would never be the same after those few moments .... after this massive intrusion upon US soils, the workplaces, the vie quotidian, the future thoughts, the futures that would never be ... The sadness, the fury, the disbelief, the nausea that jumped upon us all as New York, the emblem city, had been ravaged by who and why? How can anyone begin to know how to handle this?
We are required to move on, to make tragedies a new start, yet, all the while, remembering that this did happen, and that our lives should reflect our tragedies as well as our best moments. May our best moments take hold of our lives.
Today is an elegiac day.
PPxx
