Nine Eleven Plus Twenty-one
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 15 seconds
The 2,977 people who died on September 11, 2001, will never be forgotten.
May we never forget those we have loved.
May the memories of their lives be a blessing.
However, we lost something important in the last twenty-one years.
In those awful hours when the smoke rose from the collapsed debris of the World Trade Center, we came together and helped each other.
We were collectively in shock and grief and knew the only way forward was to stand together and help each other.
People we did not know before became friends and helped us as we helped them.
Today, we are at the end of the pandemic. Instead of uniting, we have become more divided, isolated, and fearful.
How can we return to a time when loving our neighbors is not a meme on social media but how we live?
Since Jan died, I have learned the importance of helping others and being helped by them once more.
I know that the love Jan and I shared is all that matters, and I will share it freely with everyone as our love will never die!
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
Isolation on 9/11
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 15 secondsThe 2,977 people who died on September 11, 2001, will never be forgotten.
Like all of us alive on that infamous date, Jan and I had no reason to believe that a tragedy of such a magnitude would occur.
We had breakfast and left for work as if it was an ordinary Tuesday.
I wanted to reach out and speak with her to ensure she was alive and discuss the tragedy unfolding.
Phones were down, and email was moving slower than the lines at the motor vehicle agency.
Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald Reagan, wrote a guest essay in The New York Times about public grieving for her father and Queen Elizabeth.
“Death holds up a mirror to everything — moments of love, stretches of strife, memories that punish and exalt. This is true if your family is far removed from the public eye, and if your family is nestled in the world’s spotlight.”
I have remembered the moments of love Jan, and I shared and worked to keep her memory alive.
May we never forget those we have loved.
May the memories of their lives be a blessing.
