Change in a Heart beat

Ten years ago on September 11 terrorist declared war on the world.  Many people can tell you exactly what they were doing the moment they heard the news.  They remember how they felt.  They remember so much about watching in disbelief what occurred.  I was in the university computer lab where I work.  With in minutes, after the first person came across the news every monitor in the room switched to a news website following the horror in Washington DC, Pennsylvania, and New York Twin Towers.  The video footage of the crashes happened again and again times 20 monitors.  Every where I looked there it was with people huddled around the monitors talking in hushed horrified voices.  I looked on the scene and felt nothing.  One of the powerful things about being a multiple is having one of the alters that feels nothing.  No pain, no sorrow, no horror, no sadness, no hope, nothing reached me that day.  I went about the day as if nothing could reach me.  I had been that way for almost a week.  The week before I went to the doctors office to find out the results of my biopsy on my left breast.  I was only 43 years old.  I thought I had nothing to worry about.  In less time then it took one of the jets to hit the Twin towers I was told, "You have cancer."  Time it.  It only takes a fraction of a minute to say.  The woman that helped me set up my surgery was so impressed at how calm I was about everything.  Not a tear, not even a whimper escaped from me.  Surgery was arranged for the first week of October.  I went home and my daughter asked me how the appointment went.  I answered, "I have cancer," and promptly passed out.  So much for being calm.  At the time, I didn't know about being a multiple.  I didn't know about dissociation.  I didn't know about my childhood.  I thought cancer was the worse thing that ever happened to me.  I was wrong.  The Saturday after 9/11 rocked the world I climbed my favorite mountain and had a heart to heart with a battered cactus that was more scarred than I thought I would ever be.  I struggled with prayers because Heavenly Father and I had a few things to work on.  He knew it, so let the cactus do the talking.  Reached through the gray fog that enveloped me.  I realized that on the morning of 9/11/2001 thousands of people went to work and didn't go home that night.  I was whining about cancer taking part of my body.  The cancer was caught early.  I did not have to have radiation or chemotherapy.  The most dangerous thing I was facing was the anesthesia.  I was going to live yet thousands died that day because of the hatred of a few that felt it was their way of sending a message.  Dear terrorist the way you send a message is to send a letter.  What you did was declare war on the world.  The following week I bought People magazine.  The entire magazine was devoted to telling the stories of the survivors and the amazing people that stepped up to help their fellow beings in this terrible moment in time, firemen, policemen, chefs, nurses, construction workers, New Yorkers from every walk of life, people that are not invited to the official memorial came and worked around the clock.  Then I cried.  Page after page I read through my tears.  A few years later, I listened to the photographer, Joel Meyerowitz, share his story of documenting the clean up.  I cried again.  The terrorist may have spread their hatred through out the world and nations have reacted with fear, security that keeps everyone imprisoned, and war.  However, individuals went home, took their kids out of school just to spend time together.  People reached out to each other.  Helped each other more, encouraged each other, and made a vow to never forget.  But people do.  They get busy with their lives.  Memorials are an important way to remember.  In the city where I live every September they create a field of flags, one for every person that died that day.  Soldier boots by the flags representing those that served in the military, biographies of each person that died, and teddy bears by the flags that were children.  I have a scar over my heart reminding me everyday that life can change with a heart beat.  There is a scar in the heart of the United States that remind us every day to be ever vigilant lest hatred gets the upper hand.      

Hug someone you love just because they are there.  Help someone in need just because you can.  To me this is how we will beat the terrorist.