I was perusing through a shelf-load of Olive oil in Tesco this morning when the request for three minutes silence boomed over the supermarket tannoy.  All of a sudden, what had ten seconds ago been a bustling hive of greedy Friday morning shoppers became a picture of quiet, of reflection and of deep and sympathetic thought for all of those who had lost their lives, or their loved ones, in Tuesday's tragedy.

Three minutes staring at condiments may seem like an eternity, but three minutes thinking of those who I never met, never knew and would never pass in the street went like a flash.  Old people stopped ramming their trollies into my legs, kids stopped whinging for sweets, housewives' mobiles stopped ringing and the shouts of the staff across the Deli counter ceased for those three minutes.  It was a sobering moment.

Yet, for a second I found myself remembering my Dad and in some strange [for me, not believing in religion in any shape or form] way wondered, for a millisecond, that if it were true that there is a place where souls go together [not heaven, not hell, not that they exist] would my Dad be sitting around on a cloud [in some kind of afterlife bar, no doubt] along with all the kindred souls he had met during his short time there, wondering what had happened that there was a sudden influx on souls to this place.  Would he be rushing over to ask what had happened?  Would he be panicking that it had been some global act of war that his family were involved in?  

My mind snapped back, guiltily, to those who I was supposed to be paying my respects to.

I returned home and watched the memorial service from London, and felt moved even more as I saw the faces behind the barriers; hands waving American flags, tears and people grabbing for the person next to them.  Four days of being desensitised to the whole situation through the video footage of the planes crashing into the WTC towers, as if it were a trailer for a disaster movie on a constant loop, and then seeing the grief on the faces of those people outside the cathedral was just too much and I shed a few tears.

The bravery of those passengers who stormed the cockpit of the Pennsylvania plane, determined that if they were bound to die they would do so having potentially saved the US capital from an even worse fate.  The courage of those who are standing around outside hospitals waiting for news of loved ones.  The unfailing dedication of the rescue teams working throughout the night in New York, searching for victims and survivors with minimum regard for their own lives.

It's a terrible shame that it's only in times of disaster that people rally round each other, indeed for many the only time that they *have* to.  But the fact that they do overwhelms me with a sense of humility.

Love you all

VB xx

Being a Rebel's Fine at: 
http://www.angelfire.com/ia/trustnoone

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