9-12, the Day After Disaster

            I received a phone call after midnight. Groggy, I answered the call to uncontrollable sobs. It was my closest cousin. Her husband was testing his motorcycle with a friend earlier that day. He missed a curve on a winding road and both died tragically. I remember the moment as if it were yesterday.

            The only words I could offer. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

            When I got to my cousin’s side, the scene was surreal, like out of a movie. She was looking through photo albums smiling. She didn’t look up. An occasional laugh chirped out like wounded bird. I stood over her silently, until she looked up at me. “I don’t understand. Somehow I knew before I left the house it was going to be the last time I’d see him. When they came into my office to tell me, I knew what happened.”

            My cousin and I hugged for a long time. When the time was right, we began to discuss moving forward. What would happen next? What had to happen next. Life had to go on. She knew it. I knew it. Everyone around her knew it.

            The truth is: All we have is the now. We don’t get second chances most times. Especially with death, there is no do-over. We deal with the situation and are forced to move on. We know how recovery is supposed to look on paper, but the grieving process is arduous and sometimes more painful than you would imagine the death was for the deceased.

            9-11 was one of those moments for the entire world. The shooting of President Kennedy was also like that. I was only two and a half, and yet, I remember the day completely. I remember where I was. I remember the radio blaring. I recall the people crowding in the streets randomly hugging. I remember the tears.

            I also clearly recall being semi-attached to the television on 9-11. I saw the first plane crash into the Trade Towers. Michael, my ex, and I lived in NYC the year before 9-11. Michael worked in one of the towers. Had we not moved back to Nashville, it could have been me mourning the loss of a loved one. I think of that often.

            I’m going to share something that I never expected to share on this blog. A month after Michael and I broke up, which was soon after 9-11, I took a long vacation. During that vacation I took my journals from when I began them at age 18. I had intended to read them from beginning to end to see where I had gone wrong in my relationship. In the journals I would often document dreams that stood out.

            I was shocked to come to a page about four months before Michael and I moved from NYC when I had a very vivid dream. The dream was me in a building in NYC marked with the address 666. I was running with many people from a top floor down the corridor. In the dream the reason I was running down the steps was because a plane had crashed into the building.

            I dropped the book to the floor of the plane. I couldn’t believe I had dreamed 9-11 months before it had happened. I honestly hadn’t remembered the dream or even writing it at all, until I read it that moment. But there it was, right in front of my face. The documentation in the journal went on to say, “I asked God in my terror what I should do.”

            The answer was clear. I loud voice spoke, “Move from NYC.”

            Apparently the impact of that dream affected my subconscious to the point that I convinced Michael that we needed to move back to Nashville. We quit our jobs and drove home about four months later.

            We have an amazing God! Not only was I warned of what was to come, I was given a place to go and to be safe from harm.  

            When I picked up my journal again, I was a different man. I realized that the “day after” is simply today. Michael and I were done, and I would move on, despite my sadness and desperation.

            Tragedy is happening all around us. Just watch the news, and you’ll find something grieve about. We have to be on point every day of our lives. We have to be a crystal in the chaos!

            If you know anything about crystals, they gain power by sitting in the light. They lose power when their energy is utilized. This metaphor is a great symbol for our lives. We have to stay “prayed up” or “powered up” so that we can face the hard times of our lives.

            We also have to learn to keep our brains and minds open to the perfect words and wisdom of the great Spirit who may show us in dreams and in our quiet time direction and the perfect words for the right moment. This capacity is in all of us.

            I count on this every day of my life now.