Friday, September 11, 2015

I will never forget

Driving into work this morning, I’m feeling a little sorry for myself.  Work hasn’t been awesome lately.  I opened my paystub last night to see I’d been hit with almost 2 days of personal time off.  I immediately sent an email to the HR manager, asking her to clarify what they were for; even though I’m pretty sure I know the answer.  I opted to work from home two days as I was rather sick, and I was nailed with personal time.  Its okay, I’ve got the time to use, but what annoys me is that I asked if it was okay that I work from home and my boss said yes, then turned around and sent a note to HR telling her to use my sick time.  It’s very reminiscent of my rant from a cube experience.   There’s also been a ton of tension in our department due to miscommunication between my coworkers (and some bitching) and while I’ve asked my boss to address it, he hasn’t.

Woe is me …

Then I get to work, sit down and begin my morning routine.  I turn my radio on and they have a 5 minute spot on the tragedy that occurred exactly 14 years ago.  When the world I knew lost its innocence; when thousands of people died in the worst terror attack on North America.  While there were tons of stories of heroism and humanitarianism, there were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brother and sister that would never come home.  One of my friends posted how the story personally affected her … this part from her story brought me to tears …

My sister's boyfriend at the time was also a suburb firefighter and he lost his cousin. He was down at ground zero a lot. The whole family came up to Boston at the end of September for my sister's bday and Eric washed his truck. There was a patina of baby powder fine grey dust all over it, and I remember, it was a sunny as 9/11 and I watched what was left of the Towers get washed down my driveway.

I wasn’t there, I didn’t lose anyone in the tragedy, but I could imagine standing there, on her driveway watching that myself.   I’d just returned from a trip to Florida 2 days earlier and my family was frantic making sure I was home and safe, I travelled a lot then.  On the 1st anniversary of 9/11 I flew from California to Toronto.  I remember the pilot telling us how brave we all were standing in the face of terrorism and not backing down.  I didn’t feel brave, I felt scared, and sad, but mostly scared.

It’s one of those big moments in life.  My mother always said she’d never forget where she was when she found out President Kennedy was shot.  I always found that odd, we’re Canadian, not Americans, why would an American leader being shot mean so much to her.  Now I get it.  I remember exactly where I was when I heard about 9/11.  I was at home working and I had the TV on in the bedroom to keep me company (even though I was across the hall in the office).  I was wondering why Oprah wasn’t on and why this action movie was … then it was on every channel … then I watched the second plane it the second tower, and I was getting nothing else done that day.  I spent the day locating colleagues, friends, customers, family, counting my blessings that everyone I knew was safe. 


Now, 14 years later, I will focus on counting my blessings.  Work is that, I can leave it behind when I go home and focus on how happy I am, how lucky I am, how blessed I am.

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