Skirting around big events.
One would have to be living under a rock not to know that today is the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the USA. At least, anywhere with Internet access. I’m sure there will be remote tribes who’ve never heard of it and some people who still or also associate the date with the 1973 Chilean coup d’etat (Wikipedia entry: [External Link]). As with everybody else who has commented in the blogosphere, on television, through the social media, etc, I would like to make some mark and show that the people who died will be remembered. Which I’m sure that they will – by their families, and friends, and colleagues who survived them, who loved them and miss them. I, on the other hand, never knew any of the people who died, or even (as far as I know) people who lost family members, friends or colleagues on that horrible day.
So, it kind of goes without saying that the big events of that particular day made little direct impact on me. Indirectly, the War on Terror… well, we’ll leave political debate and arguments about civil liberties to one side, shall we? So, in effect, it has become a big, shocking event that ties my timeline to the Gregorian calendar, making a particular date stand out more than just “some time a few years ago”. Like when people talk about Kennedy getting shot or, sometimes, Reagan (Wikipedia entry: [External Link] – my dad likes to tell me that the family moved back to the UK from the Bahamas on that date).
For me, September 11th 2001 was a day with an extended job interview at Surrey University [External Link] for a Research Engineer placement, with a later tour around Surrey County Council [External Link] offices in Kingston-upon-Thames as they were to be my employers / sponsors. No-one in my interview knew about the attacks until we came out for lunch. None of us got the chance to find out what was going on until the work day finished. News websites crashed due to too many people trying to find out what was going on, televisions weren’t available in the offices (oddly enough) and no-one was allowed to go in search of newspapers. I found out I had the job before I found out about the deaths. I didn’t really get to find out about that and what was going on until the train journey back up to Doncaster – and everyone on the train was talking about it, and trying to make sense of something that was essentially senseless.
Within two years, I’d quit the research engineer role. I wasn’t, I had decided, cut out for a doctorate. I’d had some help coming to that conclusion when I’d taken some compassionate leave following the death of a family friend the day before my 23rd birthday (another one of those dates that inevitably ties me to the calendar). Ten years later, and I’m working in a totally different industry and attempting to write fiction in my spare time. My life continued. All I can do, in all honesty, is offer my condolences to those who were left behind by those whose lives didn’t. So, to the families, friends and colleagues of those who died – whomever they were – I’m sorry for your loss and I hope that the memories stay good and strong, and that each day apart has gotten easier to bear.