No, it is not time to 'let go' of 9/11
There was a sad lack of coverage and yet other coverage promoting "letting go" in the newspapers on 9/11. Sometimes I feel as though there are two planets - the real one and the Disney World version that too many people like to live on.
Saying that 9/11 is something that should be publicly let go is like riding in a teacup.
Some people who have loved and lost have gone on to other loves, the pain of the first easing somewhat. We know that perhaps this is the path the heart should take. But I once had a co-worker whose husband was murdered in a barroom robbery. At a young age, with a young daughter, her life was forever injured, never quite righting itself. Another co-worker lost her daughter in a horrendous car accident. A part of her has been carved out, never to return. For her to let go would be unfathomable to her. The former was there at the parole board meetings, year after year, to make sure that the man who took her husband from her was not released.
9/11 opened a portal of reckoning between those who planned it and those whose nightmare of their loved ones' last moments, who ended up with a small vial of dust that may or may not have held part of their remains, feel. They should not have to go on without us. For we were all attacked and are now at war. Some of us just got lucky. We have no way of knowing if we each have been passed up by a similar fate.
In America we've tried peace with people of differing cultures and religions.
What greater way to live is there? Our diversity has never been grasped by a radical group that doesn't have the intelligence to participate in it. And it is almost impossible for us to understand how they think -- that someone should die simply because they believe in a different line of succession from Mohammed, or because they're Protestant or Catholic, or a member of one of the oldest religions in the world, Judaism. People who promote separatist thinking rob those of us who are tolerant. And tolerance, and its resulting freedoms, is this nation's foundation.
This is not about personal comfort. We can't ride around in teacups when there are broken bodies lying in our paths. To let 9/11 go is to leave our work unfinished. Pain is only relieved by action. We still have much work to do.
Paula Coughlan
Elburn