where were you | september 11th, 2001
i was sleeping, and the phone rang. it was less than two months since my daughter, Bekah, was murdered...i don't remember what time it was although i know it was in the morning.

it was my good friend bobby, saying, "we're under attack. turn on your television." i said, "under attack?" my mind trying to find its way around such a scenario. It is my recollection that i said, "it has to be terrorists, because no country would be stupid enough to try that." visions of coups, martial law, the nation kidnapped, ran through my mind. but i knew it had to be terrorists because any recognized entity in the world would have to know that the United States would not be taken by attack. bobby told me he had woken me up for this because he remembered that i had called him to give him the heads up when the gulf war started.

i got out of bed, made my way to the living room, and horrified, watched the horror of thousands of murders being committed in one day by a small group of people. i continued to watch for days and weeks afterward with increasing dismay as it soon became clear that gw bush would use the attack as a diving board to war.

what is war?

death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.

at the time i was essentially a maniac, writing. my daughter had just been murdered; she was dead, and i scrambled through reams of paper, often sleeplessly, to write some sense to it, to write a recovery from the loss, to acknowledge the grief that consumed me [along with rage, hatred,vengeance, bafflement, disbelief- feelings more profuse and intense than humans were built to cope with], to get her back. not long after bekah's death i found an online writer's community called writtenbyme, or WBM. i wrote this article following the 09-11-01 attack on the United States by terrorists and posted it to WBM with the preface: “We as a country feel like me as a mother – my daughter was murdered on 07-19-01.”

anyhow the answer [to the question posed in the title] was and is no - they weren't listening then and they're not listening now. but i'll still put this on my blog as a remembrance on this terrible anniversary. my heart goes out to those who undoubtedly still grieve, as i still grieve, and also to the families and loved ones of all the innocent civilians and american soldiers [over 1,000 now] who have died since - and to those who died before their time, whose youth and gifts and promises were wasted, whether because of the contemptuous act of an enraged drunk, a terrorist action, or because this so-called civilization is being run by men who disdain civilized behavior.

This is my true opinion and i feel it with all of my heart: People are not supposed to kill people. amen



Can I Be a Voice of Reason?

This is the land where hate should die,
No feuds of faith, no spleen of race,
No darkly-brooding fear should try
Beneath our flag to find a place."
- Denis Aloysius McCarthy


On 9-11-01, terrorists somehow hijacked four commercial flights at roughly the same time and drove the jets full of innocent civilians and jet fuel into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and, apparently prevented from reaching their intended target by the heroic acts of their hostages, into somewhere in PA. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that where that last plane crashed I don't know. Nor do I know where the terrorists planned to crash it. The news I have gotten over the past three days has been so enormous that at some point every few hours or so I switch to a movie. I need to know it all but I hate finding it all out.

I feel burdened, heavy, because of these synchronized acts of murder and terror. Especially burdened, because the horror, the disbelief, the futile attempts to find a why, are feelings that are only too familiar to me, since my daughter was murdered on 7-19-01.

The hatred, indignation, and grief. My daughter's killer is out of jail and has pled innocent in the presence of overwhelming evidence as to her guilt. Likewise surviving terrorists continue to live while so very many people, who were innocently going about their lives, are dead. My daughter was crossing the street when she was taken right out of her shoes by a car speeding without headlights on the wrong side of the road. Unlike the hijackers, my daughter's killer continued driving to her home, parked her car, and went to sleep. Since July 19 my purpose in life is to ensure that justice be served for a 21-year-old innocent who should not be dead.

It may not happen; DUI-related deaths are rarely prosecuted as murders. It is so that in this case the killer's actions transcend the fact of her drunkenness, to absolute depravity. Murder. If justice is not achieved via our courts, I don't know what I might do. I do know that I will not kill her killer, even though I tend to think that such an action would indeed constitute justice. Then why won't I just kill her? Because then I would be a murderer too.

I am hearing calls to war, and it frightens me. I cannot understand the mentality that says, "You took so much of our blood that now we are going to throw more of it after yours." Warmongering not only does not bring back the dead, it diminishes the living. I do not suggest that nothing be done - catch whatever surviving terrorists you can, put them away forever. But to go to war, to put our surviving young in the line of early death, only to avenge the death that has gone before? No, please.

I am reminded that our president's father was once president, and while he was we had a war that raised his popularity to unprecedented levels. Approximately a decade later, terrorists murdered thousands of people in NY, DC, and PA. What in the final analysis was gained? Saddam still rules a country! If we go to war again now, what will be gained? Terrorism and religious fanaticism will not go away. We do not need to become terrorists and fanatics; we should not. Take a deep breath, be reasonable. It may be so that the most positive outcome of sending our young into a war right now would be the boosting of Bush's popularity. He is not popular to me, not at all. Bless all the victims and their grieving families.
- posted by barbara @ 9/11/2004 11:46:00 AM