Barely noticeable now.
Cataclysmic then.
Once I felt guilty about this. We must keep the memory alive.
No, keep principles alive. Memories fade until “Pearl Harbor” is just a sound when the words are uttered, not a call to passion and action.
So too has 11/22/63 faded.
The Vietnam War. Faded. Veterans who were despised in the 1970s now proudly advertise their tour of duty on hats, license plate Frances, etc. Soon they will be gone and with them go memories.
And 9/11/01 is fading visibly. Those who remember the day (like me) will remember it less and invest less passion and remember fewer lessons and draw fewer principles from those memories.
Those who did not experience that day have only the hearsay of people like me to build experiences and memories of their own. Their memories will fade faster. These are my children.
Their children? My grandchildren will read about these events in school and it will mean nothing. It’s like my experience of my great-Aunt whose fiancé was killed in the trenches in WW I. She never married. Impact on my mother? Significant. Impact on me? It’s a story.
We live. We die. In the middle we need to live right. I don’t know what the point of this musing is except that profound experiences mean little or nothing over time to individuals. Genghis Khan. The ripples have subsided and the waters are calm again.