rule on 9/11 anniversaries? Because I don't know how else to say this...but neither my wife nor I were that affected by what happened on 9/11.
At the time, I was dying from pneumonia (didn't even know it until the doctors told me how serious my condition was) and my wife was battling ovarian cancer and came within a few months of losing her life--since the 16-pound tumor was crushing the life out of her from the inside out.
(I was three weeks away myself--because the fluid was filling my lungs and I was laboring for breath at night and couldn't breathe.)
And while I know that many of us were affected emotionally and psychologically by what happened nine years ago, those two triggers are both absent from the two of us because of what was transpiring in the days leading up to 9/11: Neither one of us was paying that much attention to what was going on.
Nor could we spare the energy.
Even *after* the surgery was successful on 9/5/01, my wife spent the next week in the hospital while I was still battling the pneumonia. It was only four days later that I was properly diagnosed and given the medicine needed to knock this puppy out of the park and save my life.
Because of what happened, neither one of us has felt the same pain or grief shared by others whom lost loved ones or friends.
But does that make either one of us ignorant or disrespectful--if we don't share in the same emotional trauma everyone else went through?
Because tomorrow, I'm just going to be sleeping the day away--partly because I ran myself ragged doing errands, therapy, and whatnot today.
And as such, another anniversary will pass me by--as so many others have before that.
Thoughts?
At the time, I was dying from pneumonia (didn't even know it until the doctors told me how serious my condition was) and my wife was battling ovarian cancer and came within a few months of losing her life--since the 16-pound tumor was crushing the life out of her from the inside out.
(I was three weeks away myself--because the fluid was filling my lungs and I was laboring for breath at night and couldn't breathe.)
And while I know that many of us were affected emotionally and psychologically by what happened nine years ago, those two triggers are both absent from the two of us because of what was transpiring in the days leading up to 9/11: Neither one of us was paying that much attention to what was going on.
Nor could we spare the energy.
Even *after* the surgery was successful on 9/5/01, my wife spent the next week in the hospital while I was still battling the pneumonia. It was only four days later that I was properly diagnosed and given the medicine needed to knock this puppy out of the park and save my life.
Because of what happened, neither one of us has felt the same pain or grief shared by others whom lost loved ones or friends.
But does that make either one of us ignorant or disrespectful--if we don't share in the same emotional trauma everyone else went through?
Because tomorrow, I'm just going to be sleeping the day away--partly because I ran myself ragged doing errands, therapy, and whatnot today.
And as such, another anniversary will pass me by--as so many others have before that.
Thoughts?