The Extraordinary Day

September 11 was an extraordinary day. It wasn't a good day, it was awful. But nothing about it was ordinary.

It was a day with extraordinary loss. It was a day filled with examples of extraordinary courage and bravery. But as I've aged, I've understood how extraordinary it was more deeply. When it happened, it felt like something at a distance, that happened to those people over there. I didn't know anyone who was directly affected by 9/11.

But now, it feels so much bigger. To have a mass murder numbering in the thousands is incomprehensible. 2,000 people feels so much bigger now than when I was in high school because I better understand the gravity and consequence of a single life.

I understand now, too, that there were people across the spectrum of humanity that perished - there is someone relatable to all of us that was lost on that day. There were wealthy businessmen and the people who cleaned the offices. Young kids interning, and people who just happened to have a business meeting that day, who were from out of town. There were first responders and priests. There were young and old. People who probably had just returned from their honeymoon or who had just welcomed a child. There were people there from all over the world.

Everyone of those people, I understand now, had an extraordinary story in one way or another, because everyone has an extraordinary story. More than 2,000 people who left their families devastated when they left. 2,000 plus people isn't just numbers - it was an extraordinary loss, which I didn't appreciate 25 years ago.

What got me much more deeply this year was remembering stories about United 93. There were people who called their spouses from the plane. Who took a few minutes to tell the love of their life, that they were going to try to take over the plane, letting it be unspoken that they would probably die. They called to say "I love you." And give their partners a chance at closure, and a chance to move on with their lives. A chance to avoid life's biggest wound - not saying goodbye.

It is something that haunts me. I didn't get to say goodbye to anyone close to me that has died. Not my cousin, Nakul. Not my grandparents. Not my father. Not my friend Wyman. These are among my life's biggest regrets, because I cannot say I love you to them now. I missed my last chance to tell these people, with the realest honesty and warmth how much they meant to me.

What an extraordinary act of mercy that is, to love and try to say goodbye - when you know your life is about to suddenly and tragically end. When you have minutes left and you call someone else not only because you want to talk with them one last time, but you know they would want to talk to you. It is selfless and brave. It is of the purest love. It is heartbreaking. And it most certainly is extraordinary.

I feel so much more sorrow and loss for my fellow countrymen at this 25th anniversary because as I have aged - and loved and lost - I understand the preciousness of a single life, and of mercy much more deeply. I know love and I know death and grief. I know what it feels like to know that you would die to protect your kids and your wife. I know the unsettling driving feeling to want to say I love you, just one more time. I know the joy of family bonds and what it feels like to be redeemed from loneliness.

The stakes of a life are so high. Even one life can be so rich and deep. Just one life, is self-justifying. One life is extraordinary. 2,000 plus lives, to lose that in the span of hours is loss so large that there is no other reaction than to be numbed to it.

I hope that is one of the lessons that we take away from 9/11 and that people, like my sons, who weren't even born when it happened, remember. I hope, beyond the geopolitics and the stories of bravery and courage, we remember the mercy people shared in the darkest of times. I hope we remember the immense loss that one life is, let alone more than two thousand. I hope we remember that every life is extraordinary.

Gratitude and grief for slow-feeling time

My thirty-third year was not actually longer or shorter than any other trip of mine around our sun. Every day I was thirty three, still had 24 hours in it and it still had three hundred sixty five whole days, each with a sunrise and sunset.

And yet, thirty three will be the age I held onto the longest.

It was the year that we put everything on hold. We held off on house projects and trips. We held off on swim lessons and soccer practices. Instead, it was just us, our family, our close friends, and our neighbors. And  everything was slow-feeling. It was like we could savor each day just a little more because we were holding off on letting our lives change with the seasons.

But I don’t think I’ll remember this longest-age-I-ever-was year, exactly as the year of “slow-feeling” time. I’ll remember the year that our boys realized they were brothers. I’ll remember the year Myles became a walking, talking, bruiser and Bo got his big-heart and his imagination. I’ll remember the year Robyn and I had so much time together, and we started this ritual of turning to each other and saying, “Hey babe, it’s a good life.” I’ll remember the year Riley finally trusted me enough to become father and son.

It was all so slow-feeling because we were just stewing and simmering in all of it - all the muck and the tantrums and the love, tears, chocolate chip cookies, and all the grief and singing and hugs, and uncertainty and glorious monotony. That is what I will remember from the age I held the longest.

The day I turned thirty-four we played tennis at the park. It was our immediate family. Our boys running to and fro, Robert minding the net with his new racket, for the first time. And perhaps symbolically, I literally ran out of the soles of my shoes. And none of us said it, but playing tennis as a family was like the unofficial end of this year that was stewing, and simmering, and slow-feeling. We pulled the pot from the stove and that was that.

In short spurts I’ve noticed this gift of slow-feeling time starting to fade away. Our friends are starting to become busy again. We are running more errands or heading into offices every once in awhile. We’re talking about swim lessons and soccer practices like we were 18 months ago. We’re doing house projects and planning trips. Our friends and family are starting new jobs, moving cities, and making moves again. The sizzling and crackling of fast-feeling time is coming back.

And I have had this chewing feeling that I haven’t been able to put my nose on until today. It’s grief. 

I’m thirty four now and the year of my longest held age, in all it’s muck and wonder, is over. With all the relief of vaccines, and reopening, and reunions, life has resumed it’s forward motion, yes. The year of slow-feeling time is over.

And I know I can’t hold onto my boys at this wonderful age any longer. They’re going to make up grow their way through lost time. Robyn and I will have more days where we are ships passing in the night. Riley’s snout will get grayer, and so will I. Everyone we love will be busier.

And it won’t be any faster or slower than it ever was. But it will feel faster. It will feel like I’m having to let go more. It will feel like a changed season and a new era. And it all will feel too fast, just like it did before I was thirty three.

And I guess what I’m asking for, Father, is a blessing. A blessing of friendships that endure as the seasons change. The blessing of having time feel slow every now and again. The blessing of gratitude for glorious monotony. The blessing of memories and stories and celebrations we can remember as our hair grays. 

Thank you, Father, wherever you are out there, for the gift of slow-feeling time and the chance to understand it so early in life. Please bless us with more birthdays to cherish and the good sense to age with grace.

The One-way Door

It’s been five years since Papa went through the door.

In five years, a lot of life - our marriage, Riley, buying a home, changing jobs, a trip to India, a trip to Frankenmuth, family dinners and washed dishes, backyard barbecues and park walks, Bo’s whole life, Myles’s whole life, 5 Diwalis, 5 Thanksgivings, 5 Christmases, the Trump Presidency, a pandemic, two half marathons, knowing God again, a mostly written book, and many many moments of laughter and tears - has happened.

And for a long time, I knew he had already left. But, still, I thought he might come back through that door. Not in a real way, but in a fantasy sort of way. Like, in a waking up from a dream or being on candid camera sort of way. For a long time, a little part of me was holding onto the only-with-a-miracle possibility that he’d be back.

I don’t know exactly when, but sometime in the past five years I let go of that hope. I knew and thought he wouldn’t be coming back. Finally, I accepted that it was a one-way door.

And so what to do? It is true, the door is one way. And one day, I too, will head through it. That is certain. This is all certain.

Basically all of us have this predicament at some point in our lives. We have to accept that it’s a one way door, and choose what happens next. Do we sit and wait in a chair by the door, biding our time until our turn comes? And then, relief, because we have rejoined our loved ones who have already gone ahead?

Or, do we build a life on this side of the one-way door? Do we make memories and hang those pictures up beside it? Or cover the door in crayon drawings and finger paint? Do we build a table and cook and feast to celebrate life on this side of the door? Do we laugh and cry and yawp and run and play and blush and garden and read and mend things?

I feel guilty, often, for trying to build a life without him on this side of the door. Even though I know it’s not betrayal, I think it is. I know living life is what he would make me promise to do had he known he was going, but I still think something’s not right about it. I may never rid myself of this dissonance. I don’t know.

But the door no longer haunts me, on an hourly and daily basis like it used to. It’s pain that’s chronic and manageable, not acute and insufferable. But here I still am, five years later, torturing myself by reliving memories of his last days, while weeping tears of gratitude for the life we have now. And still, thinking of him, praying, and wondering how he is on the other side of the door.