“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever; the goal is to create something that will.”
-Chuck Palahniuk
It’s an exceptional day today, the anniversary of a horrific morning in America that sent aftershocks around the world, rumblings of violence and echoes of grief that still persist seven years later. If there’s any day for the people of my generation to pause and give thanks for the people and things close to them that give them joy and make their respective experiences on this planet special, I think this is it.
On September 11th, 2001 my roommate woke me up and told me to turn on the TV. I watched in horror as mass murder was broadcast live for all to see. A year after that, I stood at attention in a police recruit uniform, baking in the Indian Summer heat at Union Square, steeled in my desire to protect the people in my home, my city, and my friends and family from those that would seek to harm them. In the following years, when on duty, I’d place a black mourning band around my SFPD star, trying to show respect not only to those brave men and women of the various public service agencies that perished on the 11th, but to everyone who died that day. Five years out, I showed up to work at Ingleside Station a bit early and used a bar of soap to write across the rear window of my patrol car, “WE HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN.” My partner for the day, Sean, and I nodded with approval, and set out on patrol for the next ten hours, paying our respects to the fallen by carrying on.
Today, I’m headed into work in a few minutes. Across the bay, in Martinez, a policeman who was shot to death preparing to make entry into a room where an armed assailant was holding six people captive is being buried. Before succumbing to his fatal wounds, Sergeant Paul Starzyk was able to return fire. In a few short minutes of gunfire, three people were dead: the heroic officer, the suspect and a female hostage.
While at work today, I’m going to try to remind myself if I feel fear, anxiety or overwhelmed by the enormity of crime in SF that I’m lucky to staff the thin blue line. I’m lucky to be alive. On this solemn anniversary, I’m going to use my grief to bolster my faith in my profession. And if I am to one day make the ultimate sacrifice, I will be lucky to die fighting for something that matters.
Fair winds Sergeant Starzyk. Fair winds to the men and women who died in the attacks seven years ago. You are all heroes.
We haven’t forgotten.
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1 comments:
Thank you.
Thank you for your service and your dertermination to stand in the face of evil and possibly give your life if needed. My heart breaks when I think of all that died that day as well as every time I hear an officer is killed doing his job, protecting endangered people, rescuing or trying to rescue people like those in Martinez. Fair winds to Sergeant Paul Starzyk and all who've given their lives doing what you do.
My earlier thoughts on this anniversary of, as you rightly call it, a horrific mass murder:
That day took some of every one of us.
It took “regular people” and made them our own lost loved ones. It took business people and blue collar employees, government workers and enlisted men and women. It took policemen, firemen, computer geeks, pilots, passengers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmas and grandpas, friends and neighbors.
A piece of our hearts was broken off and will always be missing.
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