December 7. September 11. We remember these dates because they are important for us, for our country, for America.
Do we remember August 6? August 9? Days when we caused so much pain and woe for another country? Days when millions died, because of our technology?
No? I’ll tell you. Those were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And I’ll admit, I had to look them up too.
Some of you won’t like what I have to say about September 11, but it’s how I feel.
Of course I remember it, I remember exactly where I was the day I found out. I think I always will. I was standing in line, waiting to enter my fourth-grade classroom. I will always remember what it was like to live through one of the greatest tragedies of the modern world. I will always remember the horrific images on the news. I will always remember the distraught look on my mother’s face when she watched. It was tragic, horrifying; it stopped us feeling safe in our own country anymore. And all those innocent people who lost their lives because they helped out, they deserve to be remembered. Everyone who lost their lives on that day deserves to be remembered. But then, so does everyone who dies. And how can we tell those who gave their lives to help out and who was but an unwilling, unsuspecting victim? Some of these people are heroes, maybe. Heroism is earned, and some earned it that day. But not all of them, not just because they died in a massive tragedy.
And I will also always remember where I was on July 7, a day most Americans don’t remember. A day whose date is seared into my brain, a day that is not acknowledged here in America but a date I didn’t have to look up. I will remember that day with much greater fear, because we were less than an hour away from those bombings instead of a whole country away.
July 7, 2005. The terrorist bombings of London’s public transport system. I remember feeling distanced from the events of September 11, but these bombings were frighteningly close. I was in Britain for the summer, staying about 20 minutes away from Heathrow, London’s busiest airport. The horror and panic, the fear, just doesn’t compare.
I will never forget September 11, even if, eight years later, the whole country doesn’t make a big production about it. Just as I will always remember July 7. I have been in or around the outskirts of London on July 7 in the years after the bombings. And even that close, it’s not something that you would see, if you were to walk down a busy London street. But people remember. Quietly, calmly, they remember. And there are people the world over who won’t forget even the older tragedies, the ones they lived through: August 6 and 9, 1945. December 7, 1941.
Countless tragedies.
Always remembered.
