Life is Short

My birthday cards arrived in mailboxes in early September. An email from Audra’s employer, Marsh McLennan, arrived just as she and her husband, Tony, were discussing ways to fulfill my birthday request. Marsh, who 21 years ago today lost 358 employees in the Twin Towers, wanted to honor first responders so critical to saving the lives of many of its other employees. Employees who donated money to organizations supporting first responders would have their donation “double matched” by Marsh. National First Responders Fund (nfrf.org) received $480 by the time Tony and Audra “single matched” my $60 and Marsh “double matched” our $120.

This donation touched my heart for many reasons, but mostly because it was personal to me. I was out of town on business that day, one of the many faced with challenges and delays trying to get home, an insignificant story compared to those at ground zero, but mine nonetheless. I worked in the insurance industry, Marsh McLennan’s industry, so I knew people who knew people. I traveled to New York for both business and pleasure for several years after, witnessing the excavation of ground zero, visiting the onsite memorials, standing in office windows imagining what it must’ve been like to escape, endure, bear witness. Ten years later I found myself in the lobby of Marsh’s New Jersey office. A large 9/11 commemorative piece hung behind the reception desk, a quilt perhaps. Though the specifics of the piece escape me, I do remember the gravitas and the moment the piece triggered within myself, a stilling to honor those that had fallen, before being rushed into the meeting I was there to attend. In 2019 when I finally made it to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, I saw the faces and heard the stories of those employees.

This morning I thought, it doesn’t feel like 21 years has passed. It still feels recent. It’s another lifetime ago, yet it’s not. Life goes on, but it’s different. I don’t really even know how to put it into words because it’s more a feeling in the heart that can’t be described. What I can do is share this story and build on what Tony & Audra started. On this, the 21st anniversary of 9/11, I will make a donation to the National First Responders Fund.

If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.
~Sandy Dahl, wife of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl

Photo by Lauran Lansdon