Twenty One

It has been twenty one years since three friends of mine were murdered by mid-Eastern Islamic terrorists.

 

That afternoon, I assumed such an occurrence would—from then on—occur every six months. Thank God it did not.

I’ve written before about my friends and will link to last year’s post and another from a few years before. I'm out of words to commemorate that loss.

Yet somehow I missed the contemporaneous words of singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter. 🎵Grand Central Station🎵, written shortly after 9/11, will speak for me. The song is here: "Grand Central Station (Album Version)" by Mary Chapin Carpenter on Amazon Music.

The first and last two stanzas are:

 

Got my work clothes on for love, sweat and dirt

All this holy dust upon my face an’ shirt

Headin’ uptown now, just as the shifts are changin’

To Grand Central Station . . . 

 

And now Hercules is starin’ down at me

Next to him’s Minerva and Mercury

Well, I nod to them and start my crawl

Flyers covern’ every wall, faces of the missing are all I see

Tomorrow, I’ll be back there, workn’ on the pile

Going in, comin’ out, single file

Before my job is done there’s one more trip I’m makin’

To Grand Central Station, Grand Central Station

 

Here’s to another 21 years without flyers on the wall—or terror fliers in the air.