The Days that Divide your Life into Before – and After – Commentary by Christine Miller

There are some days that divide your life into before and after. September 11, 2001, is one of them.

Twenty-five years later, I can still remember the feeling of that day. The disbelief. The fear. The images that became almost impossible to look at, yet impossible to turn away from. Among the ones that have stayed with me most are the firefighters, police officers and EMTs moving toward devastation while everyone else was desperately trying to get away.

I have spent all of my life around death. I grew up around my family funeral home and eventually made a career in hospice and funeral service. I have stood beside families after sudden deaths. I have buried children. I have watched husbands say goodbye to wives and daughters say goodbye to fathers. I have seen what happens in the hours and days after someone’s entire world changes. And somewhere at the beginning of many of those stories, there is a first responder.

They see things most of us never will. They walk into homes on people’s worst days. They kneel beside strangers on kitchen floors, highways and sidewalks. They bring calm into moments of absolute chaos, often carrying the memory of those moments long after everyone else has gone home. Then the next call comes, and they do it again.

That was on my mind this Friday, September 11 as Russell J. Boyle & Son Funeral Home and Harmony Hospice hosted Providence first responders to the Boyle Funeral Home on Smith Street. From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., more than 100 firefighters, EMTs and police officers came through for a cookout.

On paper, it was a simple event. Standing there, it felt like something much more.

There was laughter, food, handshakes and conversation. For a little while, the people who spend their careers caring for strangers were the ones being cared for. They weren’t responding to an accident, entering a home in crisis or trying to save a life. They were sitting down, eating lunch and talking with the people whose communities they serve. Watching them, I thought about how often we wait until a tragedy to tell people what they mean to us.

Working around death has taught me not to wait.I have watched people search desperately for one more conversation, one more hug or one more chance to say the words they assumed they would have time to say. Loss has a way of stripping away everything that does not matter and leaving us face-to-face with what does.

That lesson feels especially important on September 11.

We can never adequately thank the men and women who ran into the World Trade Center that morning. We cannot repay those who gave their lives or restore what their families lost. We owe it to them to say their names, tell their stories and make sure generations who have no memory of that day understand what happened.

But “never forget” cannot belong only to the past.

It has to mean something in the way we live now. It means seeing the firefighter who leaves dinner when the alarm sounds. The EMT who holds the hand of a frightened stranger in the back of an ambulance. The police officer who walks through a door without knowing what is waiting on the other side. It means remembering that beneath every uniform is a person who sees things that change them, carries stories they may never tell and still gets up the next day ready to answer another call. Twenty-five years ago, we promised we would never forget.

Maybe keeping that promise is not only about remembering where we were on September 11, 2001. Maybe it is about deciding what we will do with the memory.

Friday, on Smith Street in Providence, for a couple of hours, the answer was beautifully simple. More than 100 first responders were given a place to sit, something to eat and, most importantly, the opportunity to hear something we should never need a tragedy to remind us to say.

We see you. We value you. And we are grateful you are here. Because the most meaningful way to honor those who never came home is to make sure we never take for granted those who still do.