the ground, killing thousands: it must have been computer-generated or made for TV. It could not have been reality. And yet, as I watched the television and saw it happen over and over again, I knew that inside that tower was my friend Joe McDonald. That is what I go back to. Among the millions of dollars of loss, the thousands of victims killed, the wars that resulted, the flags flown, it doesn’t seem fair to me that Joe’s loss has to be shared with the world. The death of a brother or a son or a husband or a father or a cousin is an immensely personal event. It should happen in the quiet of a bedroom, peacefully. I think of losing my own brother, how I cried in torment at his funeral and prayed for him every
day for a year, of how losing him took away a part of my personal history which I shared with no one else but him. No amount of heroics or notoriety of the event can add enough to make up for that loss, so any attempt is just in vain. What was taken away, as I see it, was not just Joe McDonald, but Joe McDonald’s death. They didn’t get to lose their brother as their brother. They had to lose their brother to the world, along with the world on a stage to a monumental event. That’s just the way I see it; I just wish they could grieve their brother quietly. Joe is theirs. Theirs to love, theirs to miss. He was a gift to all of us, but now he should be theirs.
photograph by George Henken
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