I had a work event tonight, a screening of an animated film that finds connections between two tragedies that occurred on September 11th, one in Santiago, Chile in 1973, and one in New York City in 2001.
Watching the film, which is ultimately about love, I felt my own two 9/11s, the one I am experiencing now, in the present, and the one the nation, or the world, experienced six years ago. Honestly, I haven't thought too much about the events of that day in some years; but tonight I was aware of how much my life has changed since then. The theater where we held the screening is quite far south, and when I left the reception I found myself very close to Tribute in Light, and was surprised to find myself also very close to tears. Partly, I think I'm just so viscerally proud to be a part of the organization that brought that memorial to life (and that paid another kind of tribute tonight with Mel Chin's film); but mostly I think I'm extremely grateful for how things have turned out in my own life.
Many of the people who shared that day with me are no longer really in my life, and there will always be a sense of loss there; Dave and Clio were just a dream for the future, unnamed, but specifically desired.
I got home sad, aware that I did not make it home to kiss my husband and daughter good night two days in a row. And realized how little I know about what Dave experienced on this day six years ago, and how unknowable another person's life really is. It is comforting to know how much of our lives will be shared from now.
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