This has really been an emotional day.

My cousin Debbie has a daughter named Mallory who is very talented and sings for a living.  Earlier this summer Mallory posted a video of her singing with my Aunt Joan, Mallory’s grandmother while visiting with her at her assisted living facility in Florida.

The song they sang was “You Are My Sunshine.”

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away”

It was special.

At the very end of that video, my aunt says something I didn’t hear the first time I watched it.

“Unfortunately He did, He did. Yup.”

Take her sunshine away.

Likely she was referring to the loss of her husband, my Uncle Theodore, in 1982 at the young age of forty-nine.

Kim and I finally got around to sharing that video with my mother just recently.  I have mentioned this before, but my Aunt Joan, my mother, and my father are the last of that generation of my family.

I am with my mother again this weekend and I watched this video again this morning.

It was even more special today I think.

 

This is such an emotional day for all of us on many levels.

If you are of any age to be able to remember the events of 20 years ago, you remember the detail of that day and the days following and how it played out in your own life.

I was walking up the back stairs of our Rockville, Maryland office that morning when Alexa called from her University of Maryland dorm room to say a plane had struck one of the Twin Towers.  While on the phone and discussing the probable unfortunate aviation accident the other tower was hit while Alexa was watching live.

No unfortunate aviation accident.

I remember in the days that followed, watching the TV as the aftermath unfolded with Donny, and how he was all fired up to join the military and go off to fight terrorists at the age of fourteen.

I can remember a time of national time of prayer that occurred in the days following when all houses of worship opened their doors in the middle of a weekday for a time of prayer.  I dipped into a very large mostly African American church in the Landover, Maryland area where I was working that day and prayed with many others in a packed sanctuary as a nation united and grieved together.

I can remember not being able to buy an American flag anywhere in the large territory I covered at the time. The American flags were all sold out.

Now twenty years later I watch the ceremonies, hear the names read, listen to the personal stories, watch the video of the attacks, and I am reminded just how much sunshine was taken away in a literal and spiritual sense

 

This September 11, 2021, will be memorable for me because I got to see my dad for the first time in a couple of weeks.  After a week or so in the hospital with no visitors, my dad was finally admitted to a short-term rehab facility in Easton yesterday.  So today my mother got some clothes together for him and she and I went up to visit.  We were advised that due to Covid, we would only be able to speak to him through the glass, okay we thought, they have a room with a glass partition.  Once we got there however we were unable to even enter the building, handing off my dad’s clothes to a worker, as we received our instructions on how we could find his room and wave at him from outside the window of his room, standing out in the grass.

It was very sad.

It’s not going to be a good memory for me.

 

But I guess this day in these times is just going to be sad any way you turn it around.

 

It’s sad, that only twenty years after this tragic day in history that united our country, we maybe stand to be the most divided in 150 years or so.

We are divided by a virus.

We are divided by masks and vaccines.

In some cases, we are divided by miles, and in other cases just feet.

We are divided from our loved ones by the window we get to wave at them through from outside. Like visiting your human at the zoo.

We are divided by race.

We are divided by politics.

We are divided by the cable news station we choose to watch or not watch.

Divided, by the Godly and the un-Godly.

We have those who display the flag, those that would never, and those who are afraid to.

 

Yet in spite of this division, we all share the reality that in life there will be death, and with death grief.

 

We all have had or will have our sunshine taken away at some points along the journey.

 

Maybe we need another national day of prayer to unite.

Maybe some resolution of this virus to at least allow loved ones to know we are there.

Maybe we need…I don’t know…

God maybe.

 

I do know we have enough sadness.

 

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away

 

He did, and He does, and that is reason enough to believe and to be united.

Because we need each other.

To restore our sunshine when it’s needed.

 

Postscript:

The song You Are My Sunshine according to what I could find on the internet was released in 1939 by songwriter Paul Rice.  Apparently, Rice sold the lyrics to Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell for $35 and in 1940, Davis recorded the song and it became an instant country music hit.

Check out Mallory Moyer at https://www.facebook.com/TheMalloryMoyer

The photo above is of the sunshine being taken away on the eve of 9/11/2021.