Flowers at the WTC memorial, NYC. 9/11/08

Every year I find myself overcome with emotions as I listen to interviews with families affected by 9/11 – children who will never know their mothers or fathers, husbands and wives left widowed, so many lives shattered.

I weep because America is my home and Americans are my people and because 9/11 hurt – and still does. But for the victims the hurt is not limited to one day a year; it is a part of their lives every day of the year. And thinking about that hurts too.

What I’ve learned from that day is that love matters deeply, and that I must stand up against wrongdoing no matter who perpetrates it. So when I read Margari’s post Today Was… and Umm Zaid’s post Don’t Worry, We’re Going to do Something eloquently addressing the former and latter points respectively, I wanted to share them with you.

What I’ve also learned is that sometimes people respond to tragedies in inspiring, amazing ways. The title of this post is based on the organization of two 9/11 widows, Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, founded to help Afghan widows, recognizing their shared loss and humanity.

“It’s a palpable thing that a mother is a mother and a woman is a woman no matter what country you live in, and what circumstances you have grown up in,” says Susan in the documentary Beyond Belief, based on their desire to “turn this into something other than hatred.”

I also took some time to re-read The Guradian’s Writers on 9/11 series, including my favorite piece, Only love and then oblivion. Love was all they had to set against their murderers, by Ian McEwan.

Two excerpts:

A San Francisco husband slept through his wife’s call from the World Trade Centre…The building was on fire and there was no way down the stairs. She was calling to say goodbye. There was really only one thing for her to say, those three words that all the terrible art, the worst pop songs and movies, the most seductive lies, can somehow never cheapen. I love you.

She said it over and again before the line went dead. And that is what they were all saying down their phones, from the hijacked planes and the burning towers. There is only love, and then oblivion. Love was all they had to set against the hatred of their murderers.

and,

Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.

On this day I also remember the people, non-Muslim every one, who called in concern and offered their homes as safe havens, who protected mosques with their bodies, and who donned headscarves to walk Muslim women to work or to the grocery store in safety and solidarity.

May we acknowledge and expand upon our shared humanity, and may those thousands of innocents who died today rest in peace, ameen.