My appointment with the caterer to arrange for the rehearsal dinner that would precede my oldest son's wedding fell on a day when the prospect of a celebratory occasion seemed wildly out of place.
But even as events battered us with horror, rage and grief, I kept that appointment. It was Sept. 12, 2001. There would be a catered dinner six weeks hence. My son would be married, amid suitable festivities. The shocks of Sept. 11 would not, could not, keep us from the business of living our lives and marking the joys and sorrows that are our reward and our fate.
Heading recently toward a Washington hotel, my wife and I drove past the side of the Pentagon facing Arlington National Cemetery - the side blasted by a hijacked jetliner 10 years ago today. I had taken that route countless times growing up in Northern Virginia and in the decades since.
Now the familiar building where 125 had died seemed outwardly to have healed, the reconstructed portion weathered and blended in with the old. Only the strengthened security features along the highway hinted at what had changed. And in our family, against the backdrop of the pending 9/11 commemoration, with all the bitter tastes to be conjured, it was time again to dwell on a happy event - the marriage of the youngest of our three sons last weekend.
The nation's capital was about to turn to remembrance and reflection - perhaps also to thanksgiving for untold disaster averted when the passengers on United Flight 93 revolted against their murderous captors. Could a joyous wedding take place in such an atmosphere? It could and it did.
The significance of an anniversary is of course contrived. Yet we seize on these milestones as the calendar presents them - perhaps not trusting ourselves otherwise to do them justice. We're busy, other events capture our attention, time marches on and fresh scars fade.
So today and this weekend throughout the land there will be ceremonies, memorial services, vigils, concerts, colloquia where the dead will be mourned, courage will be saluted, causes and effects revisited.
In Washington, where the terrorists aimed to strike at our seat of government just as they struck in New York at our nerve center of commerce, all these impulses are magnified. And each time I looked out from our top-floor hotel room, there on the nearby heights stood a supreme reminder of the rituals that we use to mark our most significant events - the National Cathedral, a bit frayed on its topmost spires after the recent earthquake but as awe-inspiring as ever in the shifting light.
President Obama, following his visits today to New York and to the Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania, was to speak during the finale of commemorative events at the Cathedral, but a post-earthquake crane-toppling accident forced those events to be relocated.
Tonight's capstone concert will take place at the Kennedy Center. Many will recall, nevertheless, the Cathedral memorial service in the immediate 9/11 aftermath, with an eloquent sermon delivered by the Rev. Billy Graham. Perhaps only the service televised from Riverside Church in Manhattan was as moving and profound.
No, don't listen today for rueful observations as to how soon we forget - at least when it comes to the 3,000 who lost their lives 10 years ago. We have passed the remembrance test.
But beyond the pathos and morbid fascination of that one wretched morning lie stubborn challenges. We still face threats from those who would try to breach our borders to sow similar, perhaps even greater, havoc. We still must neutralize, with wise application of our national power, the Islamic radicals who use terror to disrupt and degrade the societies they abhor.
The so-called 9/11 Commission probed deeply into the attacks' whys and wherefores, with the goal of helping the country become "safer, stronger and wiser." When I came across a dusty copy of the commission's report the other day, languishing in a Sanford antique store, it seemed to symbolize how in some respects the tragedy of a decade ago is already ancient history.
Meanwhile, we hope to extricate ourselves from a war in Afghanistan that itself is nearing its tenth anniversary, with some notable successes against the al-Qaida terror clan but confronting the law of diminishing returns while our service members shoulder untold sacrifice.
My youngest son, Gavin, had just started college in the fall of 2001. When the second semester began, he joined Navy ROTC. He went to medical school on a Navy scholarship and now is a third-year resident at Bethesda naval hospital. The events of 9/11 have echoed through his years of education and, as he prepares for a regular assignment, probably next year, they echo still.
But even amid wars, people find time to laugh and love, and so it was at his wedding last weekend. Today we remember the dead. Tomorrow, life and hope beckon.
