On an awful anniversary, necessary remembrance

Television specials are scheduled. Newspaper and magazine reflections have already started. Communities all across the nation, including many of our Chicago-area suburbs, plan memorial ceremonies. Must we all spend so much time and so many resources this week remembering one horrible day?

Sunday, September 11, 2011, will not be just any day, not just any anniversary. It will be the 10th anniversary of the most shocking attack on America since the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor nearly sixty years earlier.

None of us who lived through that day of terror will ever forget the overwhelming sorrow and alarm in its immediate wake. The images of human beings leaping from open windows hundreds of floors above ground. The days of horrifying reports from people who managed to escape the billowing carnage. The tales of heroism by thousands of police, fire and health workers who suddenly found themselves on the front lines of an unforeseeable war zone. The televised memorials. Those exploding planes. The empty ball parks and the inspiring renditions of our national anthem and “God Bless America” that would fill them with a sacred unity when at last they began to stir again with sport. The roar of silence in the skies over O’Hare.

And the stunned appreciation we suddenly all shared for the blessings of family, friendships and freedom.

We called long-missed relatives to ask if they were OK. We shared tears, images and fears with colleagues at work and friends in the neighborhood. In nearly every community in the suburbs, we came together in ceremonies of prayer and remembrance.

Must we revisit all that now? Of course, we must. And perhaps now more than ever.

Ten years since the terrorist attacks, we have become riven into political and social divisions that would have been unthinkable in late September of 2001. We rail at our public servants for the expense of their service, including the brave police and firefighters who demonstrated such heroism in those initial dark days. We take up our pens and our laptops and our tablets and our air waves to condemn political leaders, often with the most insulting and abusive of rhetoric. We snarl and sneer at each other over everything from local school spending to the nation’s conduct of international affairs.

Yes, we must remember. Because, in too many ways, we have forgotten.

So, we prepare to see those images played over and over on television and computer screens. We brace for an onslaught of memories, reflections and analyses. And it is good that we do. Ten years ago this Sunday, a terrible thing happened to our nation. For a time, though, it made us better fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. It made us better patriots. It made us, briefly though it seems now in hindsight, a better people.

Of course, we have acted to try to ensure that it will never happen again. Of course, we have properly cast off our mourning cloaks and learned to move on. Of course, we have had differences of opinion in how to do it all.

But now comes a time for us to seriously reflect, to consider all that has transpired since 9-11-01, to remember both the debilitating terror of that day and the resurgent unity that followed. Now comes the time to examine where we have strayed from the ideals we suddenly appreciated and shared all together and to rededicate ourselves to the tasks we’ve undertaken to protect them.

So, yes, on this special anniversary, we will spend a few days remembering, perhaps even reliving, the painful sensations and heartbreaking images of 10 years ago.

As, indeed, we must.