September 13, 2002 - 1:07 a.m.
Note: This is the second in a five-day series on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, what we felt then and what we've learned in the year since.
So now we look forward.
The nation has mourned. We've spent a year thinking about the events and remembering the dead.
We will still do those things but I think now that the one-year anniversary has passed, the effort to "move on" will really kick into high gear.
And I'm scared, honestly.
I’m scared of war. I’m scared of future attacks. I’m scared that my friends could be the ones dead the next time. That people I love, people that keep me going from day to day, could not be there anymore.
I’m sorry if that’s not the uplifting statement you were hoping to read today.
There’s a song I heard, when I was still in high school, before any of this Sept. 11 stuff happened. It’s based on a series of words inscribed in a cellar wall in Cologne, Germany. They were written by a Jew hiding from Nazi imprisonment.
To say I could summarize my emotions with them would be wrong. What I feel about the events of a year ago and the events since is too complicated. I don’t even think I understand my thoughts yet. But if there’s something that comes close to expressing what I think, at this stage of my life, at this moment in history, it’s in the words of this song.
“I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining, and I believe in love even when there’s no one there.
And I believe in God, even when He is silent. I believe through any trial there is always a way.
But sometimes in this suffering and hopeless despair my heart cries for shelter; to know someone’s there.
But a voice rises within me saying, ‘Hold, my child. I’ll give you strength I’ll give you hope. Just stay a little while.’
I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining, and I believe in love, even when there’s no one there.
But I believe in God, even when He is silent. I believe through any trial, there is always a way.
May there someday be sunshine.
May there someday be happiness.
May there someday be love.
May there some day be peace."
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