Always Remember

A South Carolina man who claimed to be a New York City firefighter and spoke publicly while wearing an FDNY dress uniform about his heroic efforts on 9/11, has admitted that he made the whole thing up. – Global Post

He stood on the podium and looked out at the sullen crowd. Mothers hugged sons. Men held back tears. A pair of flags hung at the back, lifeless in the still air of the church.

“Today,” he said. “We gather to remember the lives that we have lost. The fathers that we have lost. The brothers. The husbands. Today, like everyday, we thank them for their selfless service.”

He hung his head and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and middle finger. A memory was trying to force its way to the tip of his tongue and he bit his lip to force it back into his throat.

He was standing in the middle of four fresh faced firefighters. There were tears in his eyes and he pointed to a series of photos on the wall.

“Those,” he said. “Are the heroes. I was just lucky.”

The young men shook their heads and patted him on the back. They thanked him for his services and when he walked away they talked about how one day, they would be just like him.

A woman in the front row of the church started to cry and he dropped his hand from the bridge of his nose to the podium.

“Looking back at that day, a lot of people say what they would have done. They say that they would have run into those buildings just like these men that we honor today.”

He stopped his speech momentarily to stare into the eyes of one of the dead firefighters whose portrait laid surrounded by flowers on a stand next to the podium.

“Well,” he said. “It’s easy to be brave when you know the cause. When you know the reason that those planes hit the buildings. When you know, that the United States was under attack. But we, we didn’t know anything.

“We rushed into those buildings because we knew that people were in trouble. We didn’t know the magnitude of it. We didn’t know the politics behind it. All we knew was that there was a job to do and we did it. Unfortunately, many of us didn’t survive to tell the tale…”

Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that he was lying. Somewhere in his soul he was ashamed and in the back of his throat rested the truth.

He was eating a bowl of cereal in the comfort of his living room when the second plane hit. He watched the fear and panic as people scrambled through the grey dust. He watched as the firetrucks drove into the confusion without hesitation.

He watched it all.

When they asked him what had happened he told the story like he had been there and eventually they believed him. Eventually he believed him.

“And that’s why I’m here,” he said. “To speak for them. To tell their stories. To tell all the mothers, sons, daughters, wives, fathers, brothers, friends, sisters, that they loved you.”

He stepped back from the podium and walked down the three short steps to his seat in the front row. A choir sang “America the Beautiful” and the sharp pain of guilt crept up his spine.

He started to weep and a thousand hands of comfort fell on his shoulders.