Once in September…

Until that day, that day was our son Brendan’s birthday. Always, always a happy day. A day, in our home, to celebrate life. Our own Brendan’s life.

But that was before September 11^th became 9.11. Before Brendan’s birthday became a remembrance of things past, that past all at once lit against sudden darkness. Before Afghanistan. Before Iraq. Before Homeland Security and pre-flight pat-downs. Before any of us thought any of us had anything to fear.

And now…

The pages of history dog-eared by columns burning. By pictures of the lost, taped and thumbtacked, sunlit by day in that last summer, by night by candle. By hope, tears, anger, memory, grief, revenge and, for some, an uncentered joy.

And Brendan himself, today 27, a decade after a teenager’s birthday was hijacked and made his generation’s Pearl Harbor?

Four years in New Orleans, helping to rebuild after Katrina.

Two stints in Haiti after the earthquake.

And just yesterday home from Japan, after months doing his part to undo a tsunami.

A life, so far, well lived.

But all those other lives lost.

Those many thousands of lives, these many thousands of days later.

The good those lives, left to live, might have done. The love they would have shared. Those other hearts, those hearts the lost themselves once loved, not ever broken.

And today?

Today we remember things past, even as we imagine that future all those lost would have all of us imagine.

And here at home, here in this small town in Iowa, here at this old yellow house that has already seen its share of history, watched so many lives quietly come, quietly go. A house that has heard laughter dampened by time. The laughter of children who lived their lives, only in time to themselves become ghosts. An old yellow house that remembers, in its way, all those who passed this way.

Here at this old house, we today celebrate life. Celebrate Brendan. The good he’s done. The joy he’s given. The hope he, at 27, represents for us. For all of us.

© 2011, Dónal Kevin Gordon