911. Nine One One
We have only to see it
enumerated, written or spoken for us to conjure up fresh memories of that
horrendous day. It’s odd; 911 used to mean something else to us. I have
actually wondered if the terrorists chose that day based on the emergency phone
number it represents.
Ground Zero. We don’t have to close our
eyes to see it looming before us. We can almost walk it’s artificial valley in
our mind.
Everything changed that day, perhaps at a
more traumatic and persistent level than December 7th, “the day that
will live in infamy,” or November 22nd, the infamous date of
Kennedy’s assassination. (November 22nd was the only day I stayed
home sick from high school in 1963. I don’t know how I managed to choose that
day. But I’ll never forget Walter Cronkite, and his memorable broadcast.)
I was also watching TV on “911.” Oddity of
oddities, I was coloring my wife’s hair. And then it happened!
Hundreds of firemen and policemen died
trying to do the impossible. They embraced that well-worn adage; “We have to go
out. We don’t have to come back.” One particular father’s son didn’t come back;
at least not alive.
We see the elderly man trudging down the
dusty boulevard, stumbling occasionally, and picking his way around the rubble
of unknown objects. He has a determined look on his face, and his jaw is set.
We notice his apparel, for he is dressed like one of the dozens of other men
around him. He tells a reporter that he is a retired fire chief. He has been
away from his life’s work for nearly a decade. But fate has called to him, and
he has responded to that Call. He holds a little spade in his hand, and we
begin to realize the task he has embraced.
“My son is under that rubble, and I come
here daily. I come here to dig. I have been digging on this site for ten days, and I will continue to dig 'til every fallen hero leaves this place."
He
thinks he knows where to dig. At least he’s digging in the general area where
his Johnny “laid it all down forever.”
He has another son. That son is also a
fireman, and on that day of days, James had spent the night at Ground Zero. He
had slept under the stars, as if by some means Johnny could know that he was
there for him.
The father continues to speak:
“We never leave our heroes on the field
of their labor. We find them and we carry them away. We cannot leave them here."
The father digs in the heat of the day,
and beneath the glistening white moon. He bends his back for 16, no 18 hours a
day. He sleeps in fits and starts. He is a man on a mission.
Exactly three months to the day after 911,
Johnny is found and identified. It would be fitting to think that his Dad found
him ‘neath those tons of twisted steel and glass, but that’s not how it
happened. But Dad and Brother honored their Son and Brother by taking him off
the field of his labor. James may have remembered the title of that old song,
“He’s not heavy, he’s my brother.”
Johnny was given a hero’s funeral. Father,
brother and his own little son helped carry him to his final resting place. We
see them sadly walking, struggling a bit with the casket, marching cadence to a
bag piper’s mournful melody.
And I might quickly remind you that
several fathers were on the field, digging for their lost children, and several
old men “stayed the course”
... ‘til their boys were found.
... ‘til their boys were found.
By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "Unconventional Devotions" Copyright 2005
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