Where were you 19 years ago this morning? I was at the Nursing Management 2001 conference in Disney World with 3 colleagues. We were sitting in the first session that Tuesday morning when the keynote speaker mentioned a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers in NYC. Not having any other information, it seemed like it must have been a sad, tragic accident. We didn’t have smartphones back then so news flashes weren’t readily available on our little cell phones. Our CNO and apparently others decided to get more info as several people started to walk out of the session. I stepped out a few minutes later to see if I could reach my parents who were scheduled to fly from the Cape that morning to visit my brother in Albuquerque. I couldn’t remember if they were flying from Boston or Providence. It wasn’t long afterwards that the speaker decided to end the session. Attendees flooded into the hallways as Disney staff had begun to place TVs tuned to the news. And then we watched the live shots of a second plane hitting the other tower.
This morning my mind is replaying that entire day. There’s so much more I could share of our story that Tuesday and the days to follow. I didn’t reach my parents for 3-4 long hours. They were grounded in Providence and safe. UHS worked from a great distance to secure the last rental car at the Orlando airport so we could drive home. We looked for all the information we could find buying newspapers at every stop, tuning in to crackly news reports on radio (no Sirius XM back then) and calls to loved ones. We and thousands of others travelled the interstates back to our homes, the only place we wanted to be during the days that followed but all the way wondering what kind of help we might need to lend to NYC as nurses. Sadly, none would be needed.
9/11 was one of those rarest of world changing events overflowing with emotion laden memories forever filed in our individual and collective histories. And here, 19 years later we stand on the precipice of perhaps an even rarer world changing event - the 2020 presidential election. We are being poised and played for potentially this nation’s second civil war. I fear for my country and for all reasonable fellow citizens. Our emotions are not the natural result of an actual event. Our emotions are being manipulated by powerful people in influential positions and supported by profoundly biased and even deceitful media.
Do you remember what the next day, 9/12, was like? I do. It was a sense of unity, of “we are all in this together”, of kindness and patience and sacrifice even among complete strangers. I believe that is who we Americans really are. We have different opinions, strongly differing opinions. That’s a good and healthy thing. We are, though, dependent on information, on facts, on the truth to form sound opinions and guide our emotions. When we have that we can move forward together with and through our differences. When powerful people manipulate, exaggerate, conceal, and/or distort information, facts, and truth we will be torn apart...we will tear each other apart. The tearing has already started.
If the spirit of 9/12 isn’t dead, it’s on life support. I fear that 9/11 will have been a walk in the park compared to what we will see on 11/4 this year. For myself, I’m going to do the same things I did after 9/11.
1) Get all the information I can from a variety of sources to verify truth
2) Stay calm and not allow my emotions to cloud clear thinking
3) Show kindness to others, not hatred
4) Pray that God would forgive us all and bring healing, understanding, and peace.
