Life Preservers

What We Carry

September 10, 2026 at 5:02 pm Leave a comment

This week as I watched a news interview with a mother remembering her fireman son . . . when I saw pictures of the Tribute in Light . . . as I see again the unaging snapshots . . . it all comes rushing back. The images we all know from September 11, 2001, have been playing through my mind, one after another, in that unforgettable, gut-wrenching slide show, on repeat.

The same images have played and re-played in my brain on each anniversary, but, this year, over the past few days, I began to notice that an extra image kept popping in. It was an unrelated event. It had nothing to do with that day. And it caught me off guard. It seemed such a random and peculiar thing that I wondered about the function of my 25-years-older brain—until I sat with it for a bit.

The anomalous image was a bunch of people, outdoors at night, crowded around a cylindrical yellow cage. It was the Quecreek Mine rescue.

Quecreek happened in July 2002, ten months after 9/11. I remember hearing about the miners trapped underground. The news was bad. And the complications of time and earth and water and breathing so complex that success seemed impossible.

I checked the news every day, and, on that last evening, I watched it all, curled on the couch, holding my breath, trying to hope. I watched every moment, until 2:45 a.m., when each man was finally, amazingly above ground. And I kept watching as I cried with happiness and sobbed in delirious relief.

People were found. Everybody was rescued. Hard work and ingenuity and courage and optimism were enough that day. The efforts of rescuers, some old-fashioned luck, and a 22-inch-wide rescue capsule lifted us all.

I’m not saying that Quecreek’s happy ending was a remedy for 9/11 (nothing ever could or will), but it was a miraculous moment in a dismal year. And it was a reminder that even though there are times when our most desperate hopes fail us, it’s important to know that our worst imaginings are not prophecy.

We cannot change the past. We cannot un-know what we know of September 11, 2001. We are its witnesses. And we will carry that day with us throughout our lives. Yes, there will be days when the weight of it will throw us off balance. But, today and every day, we get to choose our own ballast.

We get to choose what else we carry.

We can cling to despair and anger and hate. Or we can stuff our pockets full with courage and compassion and joy. We can be exceedingly horrible to one another or we can be outrageously kind. We can look away with fear or look life in the eye with love.

Despite evidence of very bad things, we can still be good humans. Despite it all, optimism is still an option.

---

Entry filed under: Life Preservers. Tags: 9/11, good humans, Life Preservers, love, optimism, Quecreek, September 11.