The sun is just barely showing pink between the buildings across the street, so I don’t know yet if the sky will be that frightening clear blue color today.  It was, that day, and the day after. It is a color and a clarity that I apparently cannot forget.  That kind of blue, to this day, makes me shudder with remembrance.

And just like another day long ago, I am up early, suited in my workout clothes, ready to head to the gym, because I have a long list of things to “accomplish” today.  I do not need to drive to Baltimore as then; today it is emails and getting the car serviced for a short trip out of town.  But I’m up at the same hour.  And there is a slight tug in my stomach at the idea that I will walk down that same street and take up my position on the machine and exercise, just as I did that day.  At least it isn’t the same gym.  At least it isn’t the same machine.  Even though some things are different, the similarities, this day, make me shudder with remembrance — I will metaphorically hold my breath, yet again, until I have worked out and returned home.

September is full of days like this…days when the past bleeds through into the present, days when the most ordinary things that I do each and every day carry the import of the ages for me.  There will be, with God’s help, no long drive to Baltimore today in search of safety, in search of the calm and normality of the first day of music studio class amidst a world unspeakably changed.  There will be no drive to Baltimore on September 18, to prepare for life-threatening and ultimately life-giving surgery. There will be no long, sad drive to a veterinary hospital on September 29, to say a final goodbye to a beloved friend.

It is so odd to me.  As I search through my sources for a quotation about remembrance, all I find are words about death.  And yet, remembrance is an act of those of us who yet live…those of us with breath and life, those of us with a day that stretches ahead of us in which we can change and grow and love, and, in so doing, honor the gifts given to us by those we remember.  The unknown (to me) people who died on 9/11, the first responders who rushed to save that day, the skilled surgeons and nurses who so easily made me whole, the four-legged friend so missed and the kind and gentle staff that sat with us in our pain — these people, without knowing me, gave me gifts of life and love that I cannot repay except in my own living.

So yes, today I will live.  And today, just like the other eventful days that will come to me this month, today I will remember.  The words that many of us will speak today, and that sadly, many of us speak too often now — “Never again” — these words mean more to me than we mustn’t let this terrible thing that we remember ever happen again.  These words mean to me, choose life, choose hope, choose love, because with those choices each day we might just make the world a little better.  And I know that I feel this because time has passed, and I have remembered and grieved, so that now I can remember and live.

And…it looks like there are a few clouds mixed in with that sunrise after all.  The day is before us, and it is time to get started as we remember, and move our feet (to paraphrase the African proverb).  And so, I shall do just that, with an open heart, into the world that dawns this day.

May the power of your memories and the strength of that power lead you to do the same, this day and every day, my friends.  Amen.