A Good Trade

I’m not a melancholy man, nor do tearjerkers manage to manipulate me. One thing, though, one thing, no matter the story, will blindside a raw weakness in me and crack the stoic.

The last full measure.

Whether it’s the regiment of black Union soldiers, silently marching to their willing deaths on the beach, willing to die to prove to everyone that they are worthy of humanity not slavery, and the white soldiers, the ones who depraved them, realizing what they’re about to do and spontaneously snapping to a salute.

Whether it’s the metal man created for malevolence but forgetting and learning from a boy to be more than tool, the metal man hunted without mercy by those who fear him and in so doing launch their own destruction to rain down on them…it is the act of the metal man, shaken from his anger, to smile, turn, and fly into the annihilating rain to save everyone in exchange for himself, joyfully calling out his ad hoc hero’s name: “Suuuuperman.”

The tears flow.

Six years ago today, malevolence fell on us, sending thousands to their deaths in New York and Washington, DC. Six years ago, I drove by the Pentagon 10 minutes before it was hit, only to helplessly watch the television with most of my coworkers as the towers fell.

Within the horror, heroism bloomed. Firefighters, police, and emergency workers responded, many coming in off-duty. They chose this. They chose this life, they chose this moment. But an old wartime saying hammers the reality home: Real heroes never come home.

They give up their life so that another may live.

The people on Flight 93 understood. They and those who chose to enter the burning destruction, full knowing the end would come without warning but also knowing others would die if they didn’t, they understood what they had to do, and what awful but awesome trade they had to make. One life for another.

Today, tomorrow, forever, that is the ultimate lesson of September 11. It was a lesson that propelled strangers to come after the fires were out to dig through the wreckage on a faint hope more were alive. It was a lesson that fueled unrivaled donations to the American Red Cross and other emergency organizations. It was a lesson we should never forget: That the ultimate gift we can give is of ourselves.

Tonight, in the quiet night, the painful memory of that day perhaps is dulled, scabbed over by time. But then I think of the heroes, the real heroes, glancing up at the hell above them, yet still going in. And the tears flow.