I have been writing a lot in the past few weeks about the loss to my family, but today is not the day for that. Today is the day to think about the loss of thousands of people who did nothing wrong and had no way of knowing that it was coming. Today is the day to think about those mothers and babies who lost their mothers and babies to an act of hate.
I was 25 years old when the planes hit the towers. I was on my way to a journalism class and as of the moment that I entered the classroom I thought that there had been a horrible accident and a plane had lost control and crashed. Upon leaving my class I headed to the student union where the TV was on and there was probably a hundred people staring at a TV screen. I watched as the second plane hit the tower. I gasped in horror at the scene. At first feeling confusion and denial that there was a mistake and that it couldn’t possibly have happened again. Then realizing that it wasn’t a mistake. That this was an actual act of terror.
I could talk about the feeling in the US after this event. I could talk about our freedoms and our fears.. but I don’t want to. That is not what is important about that day. That day thousands of people died. Real people. Real mothers, real fathers, real children, real sons, real daughters, real brothers, real sisters, real husbands, real wives.. grandmothers.. grandfathers.. aunts.. uncles.. friends. REAL.
Most of us have seen the movies made about this tragedy. Some of them dramas, some conspiracy theories, some just plain news series… most of them talk about what our nation was going through, but I don’t want to talk about that.
I was working for a newspaper company when the towers fell, and that day the phones were silent. The office was silent except for the radios that were playing the updated information of what was being seen and discovered. I was listening to the radio when I heard about the plane hitting the pentagon and then the plane going down in that Pennsylvania field. I was living in Boston when I saw that the planes that destroyed so many lives left my city.
I don’t want to talk about how our policies changed, or how everyone suddenly wore the flag proudly. I want to talk about my old boss’s wife who was on one of those planes. I didn’t know her well. I wasn’t at that job long, but I remember her. I still remember her. She was always pleasant and friendly, and very stylish. My boss was a sweet man who basically paid me to read books and watch the phone and the door… he always came in with a smile.. and always left well after the rest of us. He lost his wife that day. A lot of people did.
I was lucky. That was as close as I got to losing someone in that disaster. I was lucky, my father had gone to Boston that day for work, but he came home. My friends had flown to other destinations, but they all made it back. At 24 years old I had no idea about true loss. I thought of that calamity as a national loss… now that I’m older. Now that I’m more aware, all I can think of is those kids who never saw their parents again… and those mothers and fathers who watched the building that their babies worked collapse. Those husbands and wives who received that last phone call knowing their love was never coming home.
Today we all see the police, fire, and military presence memorializing those lost, and a great deal of them were armed forces and emergency services, but a lot of them were just everyday people who smiled at the front desk girl every morning. Today is about them and their families.
I was sitting pool side with my friend as we watched our kids splash about. My son was so proud to be in the deep end. He had just learned to swim without his floaties this year and he could finally keep up with the big kids. One of his favourite things was retrieving the rings from the bottom of the pool. We were all laughing as they were doing cannonballs and chasing each other about.
for her to not even question me. I’m not sure that I took a breath between that text and answering the phone call that came through. “I got a call from his lawyer. The people at Neil’s house found him in his room at about 3pm… I’m so sorry. He passed away.”.
I spent the next 2 hours making phone calls. I called Neil’s parents. My son’s therapist. My brother.. my aunt.. anyone.. everyone. I kept saying it out loud. “Neil is dead”. I kept waiting for someone to say, “no.. there was a mistake.. they found him in time. He’s in the hospital, but fine.”. That message never came in.. that call was never made. Neil was dead. Neil is dead. After almost 2 years of sobriety my biggest fear came true, and I had to be the one to tell our sweet little boy that his father was gone forever.
No one cared when Laurence Fishburne played Perry White in Man of Steel 2013, or when Eartha Kitt played Catwomen in Batman 1966, or Idris Elba played Heimdel in Thor 2011.. I mean maybe comic book geeks are just not that strict on continuity or cannon.. (sarcasm for those who don’t know any comic book geeks).. or maybe they understand that actors are to be judged not by the color of their skin.. but the content of their character. At any rate… it’s a movie people. Get over it.
The title is a bit misleading because the mutants are not considered “gifted” by most of the population. They are considered enemies and threats to all human kind. Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t some mutants using their powers for evil.. as they are .. shall we say, human, but for the most part they are just ordinary people. There are some, like the kids focused in the beginning of the show, who hurt others accidentally before they learn how to control their powers, and there are others who hurt people in self defense, but the authorities aren’t interested in motives, they are only interested in locking up and/or killing every mutant.
talk to one another. In real life we have certain groups against illegals or Muslims because they have heard that some have hurt innocent people.. They feel that anyone that even looks like they could fit in these categories should be punished immediately, yet they are the same people who scoff and ridicule at the thought that guns should be outlawed because they are used more often than not to kill and maim innocents everyday.
Do we live in the Matrix and if so what does that mean to us? Today though, I noticed something that I had not before. One of them commented that if we were made as a game to entertain others that “You’d better go out and do something interesting as to not get deleted” and NDT joked that was what death was, it’s just someone getting bored with the character. I didn’t really think much of that analogy, as most of the world is full of very boring people… but what sparked in my mind is the idea of religion and the “creator” who has somehow spread the word that he/she is the best and that it is the people’s job to get other’s to follow that word.
It amazes me the lengths people will go just to be right. A “friend” on Facebook just published a video about how the Left is so hypocritical that they are up in arms about illegal children but don’t try to do anything to stop children being killed here by guns and drugs… when I pointed out that the left has tried to put through policies for gun control and mental health he stated that no one was upset when Obama took the kids from their illegal parents.. when I cited articles that stated that Obama, though he held families and unaccompanied minors in detention centers, he didn’t actually separate babies from their moms. He then spent the next hour defending the policy to anyone willing to comment.