This weekend was full of the annual “Never Forget”
reminders of the 9/11 attacks. You couldn’t escape them, and nor (I suppose)
should you.
I personally try to distance myself from the nightmare
images of continuous loops of the second plane flying into the World Trade
Center, viewed on a bank of monitors across a full wall at the office in
Maidenhead. Or of driving home to London on the M4 the next afternoon and
seeing GSK’s headquarters flags flown at half-staff, which sent me into uncontrollable
sobbing.
I do not compare my grief to anyone else’s—certainly not
to that of people who woke up that morning with intact families and
friendships, and went to bed with great gaping, multi-story, jet-fueled, ash-covered
holes torn through them.
But here’s what I also will never forget: the friends and
colleagues across Europe who called and texted me for days, to check on me, to
cheer me and to show their concern for me.
A sheet of A-4 paper with a hand-lettered message taped
to the elevator wall at a hotel in Florence expressing condolences to any
Americans who might be staying there for the appalling wounds we’d suffered.
And signatures in different inks periodically added in solidarity.
The people—familiar and unknown alike—who insisted that I
(and we) did not stand alone. The ones who’ve been here all along, even when I
didn’t notice them, or was sure they didn’t even exist.
It seems odd that it takes the worst possible thing to
make you realize this truth, and sometimes even then it escapes you. (Well, maybe not you. But me.)
But I’m profoundly grateful for all of them who not only
feel the caring but also express it. Doesn’t really matter how large or small
the gesture, how eloquent or inarticulate the communication; it’s the act
itself that makes all the difference. As I well know.
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