What Will the Future Bring?

By the time you read this, two weeks will have passed since the events of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. It has not been named, so I believe I will refer to it as Dark Tuesday. I have tried to write something intelligible. I can't figure out how to make sense of anything. Of what use is anything? What's the point? But I have come to realize that, for me, nothing has really changed.

Ever since I was a young child, I have been aware of the passage of time. I can remember when I was very little understanding that the people I loved would not be with me forever. I enjoyed every moment with my family. The one emotion I did not have when my grandfather died was regret. I had not wasted my time with him. I had loved him and never failed to let him know it.

My grandparents lived in a house on the Atlantic ocean. I can remember lying in bed at night feeling the spray of the ocean through the screened windows. It was pure joy. I spent much of my youth there. For a few years my family lived with them. I went to elementary school for some of the time I lived with them. I loved the ocean so much, I would get up early, go swimming, come in and shower, and then go to school. As soon as I came home and did my homework, I was back in the water. I used to love to sit on the sea wall and look out on the ocean under the sun and the moon. I used to imagine that the path the moonlight left on the water was the road to heaven.

These early years are still a large part of me. I always tell the people I love that they are important to me. I spend as much time as I can with my family even though we live hours away. I call them frequently and share my life with them. I have made sure that my children know the people who love them as well as possible. Even so, now I tell them even more frequently that I love them.

We never know when our lives will end. That end can come for any number of reasons. While Dark Tuesday's events were unusual, death is not. So I think the most important thing we can take from the carnage of Tuesday is that love is more important than ever. I believe that is the biggest reason why the perpetrator of the pain did what was done. People who can?t feel love must destroy it. What they can?t understand is that it can't be destroyed. It survives anything.

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