New York Thank You

The mood wasn't somber, no one wiped away running tears, the talk revolved around the coming onset of spring. It wasn't what I expected to see just outside the hallowed ground where the Twin Towers once stood. And it wasn't what I had thought a candlelight vigil would be like. Nonetheless here was the cozy group of people holding a candlelight vigil for the soldiers in Iraq on the fourth anniversary of the war.

My girlfriend and I, both aspiring journalists, had come for the food and sights, it was to be a vacation from work. Then we came down from the bridge over Ground Zero to see a small group forming, staring up at a dim hologram on a distant building. As journalists, and as humans, we became interested. The fact that no one walking in the bridge over such a deadly spot had even bothered to glance was somewhat unsettling. So we thought it would be reaffirming to gather in front of the location with people in a similar mindset. So when we walked up to the small group of no more than twenty New Yorkers I expected tears. Of course I hadn't thought of a tough New Yorker's skin, or of the need to stay strong in the face of despair.

My girlfriend went straight to work with her camera, milling around the group with a photographer's precision. I didn't have a camera so I let go of my journalistic leanings and let myself be engulfed by the group.

Before long I was using all of my skills to light a long, slender candle against a harsh northern wind. It had been given to me by someone who couldn't stay, and my manners wouldn't allow me to decline. So there I was shielding a flickering candle and trying to understand what I was doing.

The people were easy and talkative, soon I had been drawn in to one of those ubiquitous conversations about the weather. If not for the candles and the cameras I would have thought it was just a bus stop conglomeration. Then I heard a startling comment; a lady remarked to another nearby that she should light two candles, the other for her father, gone five years to the day. It was a sobering remark, bringing back to the reality of what I was doing.

With the outsider's shock dissipated I thought of the moment's significance. To hold a candlelight vigil on the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq was powerful, but to hold at the spot where it all truly began, where thousands of people had died at the hands of terrorists, that left me in awe. It wiped away the political aspect, the protests and the anger. In this spot, on this day, all that was left was remembrance and hope. To remember the people who had died at the spot and the soldiers who had died abroad, and to hope and pray that the soldiers still over would, someday, return safe. This wasn't a vigil for liberals, or conservatives, but for all Americans to join together, be thankful, and talk about the weather.