A Memory from The East Village: My Shock and Awe

But, that particular memory is overshadowed by another, a more recent memory that has led to a shared painful reality, a reality that some say has divided and fatigued an entire nation, a reality most of us witness from the comfort of our homes and communities, a reality that is nightmarish, a shared but awful truth of where we the people find ourselves today.

In the five long years since the first bombs landed in Baghdad, this nation has seen countless sacrifices that most of us learn about through photographs and stories and occasional movies. But what most of us see, hear and read only begins to touch the deeper truths, truths that are too painful and awful to communicate by words, images or anything beyond experience itself.

And, as time continues to pass in neighborhoods and homes across the nation, as images of fireballs and thundering explosions fade yet another year away into our collective memory, millions still ask the question, was it all worth it.

Still, melancholic observations from New York don’t when compare to the memories and tears of a Mother in Indiana, a wife in Detroit or a Father in Mississippi who deals with the daily reality that their son, daughter or husband will not be coming home to walk the dog, go to the grocery store, play ball with a friend, go to school or push the baby in a stroller down the street?