(This is a green rolling field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It is worth a stop if you happen to be passing that way. Photo New York Times).
There has been an unusual flood of emotion these past few days. It is a wave that accompanies the passing of a Monarch we have known all our lives, and of course the memories of what occurred on this day 21 years ago.
The change caused by the events that morning lingered for two decades. The Pentagon was repaired in a remarkably short period. The funerals of Dan and Vince and the others who perished there were conducted with solemn dignity. I do not recall the specific event that took us to Manhattan some years later. It was possibly the 60th anniversary celebration for our folks who were wed in Mid-Town in a world still unfolding after the end of the Second World War. We took the subway downtown to see the Trade Center site. It was then neatly cleaned up and in preparation to become a memorial to the horror.
Only a few years later, the long drives across Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan became routine as we did family management at the end phase of our parent’s lives. The 800-mile drive to their retirement home in Northern Michigan beat flying based on experience gained over time. The familiarity of our personal cars and freedom from the scheduling required to deal with the chaos of the airports in Chicago or Detroit made the freedom from anonymous jets and rental cars. The family burial ground is in the green-covered soil of the Cumberland Valley, so it is familiar from the funerals that marked the passing of the previous generation, and the statue that marks the center of the plot.
On one of those trips we were passing back east on the Turnpike through a town called “Somerset.” There were some signs advertising the opening of the national memorial to Flight 93. There was no hurry to get back to Washington, and the family business requiring the trip was complete. We took the exit without conversation, since it seemed the logical and proper thing to do.
That would have been around the time of what we were calling the “Great Recession,” before the last funeral that called us back to the Cumberland Valley. I won’t recount the heroic saga of what ended Flight 93, though I do recall being in a huddled meeting of assorted functionaries under the overhang in front of the CIA Headquarters 21 years ago. Flight 93 was still aloft, destination unknown and possibly headed for the very building before which we stood.
When we approached the impact site those years later there was a rising feeling of connection. Nothing symbolic and soaring like The Towers, or the dark slash in the stark walls of the Pentagon. Shanksville is green and gentle. The walk across the verdant field from the respectfully distant parking to the impact area gives time for thought. And memory of that morning, and what happened on Flight 93 in the last minutes of their journey to a field in Pennsylvania.
And the third of our lives lived since. With a prayer for those lost that morning.
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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