The Rants and Thoughts of VALadyNole

Today I sat down to have lunch with fellow professionals. 5 women and 1 man. We all work in the child protective services. We were enjoying ourselves talking and getting to know each other a little better. One of these professionals says that she was born in New York. The one man at the table asks her exactly where and she said Manhattan. He tells her that he is from Brooklyn. Once this is said we all know what the next question is going to be...here are their stories. The guy from Brooklyn said he was at work and was sent home after the second tower was struck. He said the entire ride home the thing that stuck out to him the most was the deafening silence. In a city where it is never quiet he couldn't hear a bus, the subway, sirens, or voices. He said that as he drove people waved at him. "In NY if you look at someone too long it starts a fight and now people are waving at me." When he got home he went to the roof of his building where he watched the twin towers crumble

Someone I follow on twitter posted this blog.  I posted their blog and then my response.   Schism Sunday XVI:  The Art of Memorializing             Tragedy I know today is not Sunday, and there is a reason for that. There are things I like to let pass before I open up a can worms. But today is Monday, and I am opening the can up! If I had lost a loved one tragically 10 years ago and I was still actively mourning and commemorating his or her day of death with emotional displays and expensive rituals most people would either be annoyed with my inability to move on or concerned about me. People would urge me to move on and to heal and not to stew in grief for 10 years or more. People who cared for me would want me to find new meaning and purpose in life and would want to see me healthy and happy. And yet as a country, the United States seems hell bent on never forgetting. Never healing. Never moving on. Our country clings to our grief and tragedy like a badge of honor. Though our ph