Up Front 09/07

I was reading a posting that a cousin had written on her Blog (web log) recently. It was about her memories of the day a bomb went off in her home town of Omagh in Northern Ireland. She was shocked to realise that last month was the ninth anniversary of the incident. As she was carrying her daughter across the yard she heard the bang. She felt the tremor, saw the smoke from the bomb rise above the town and for a full two minutes there was complete and absolute silence. No birds sang and as she put it ‘nature seemed to hold its breath’. Apart from the horrors she described, she also jotted down some random thoughts; remembering for example the man who ferried the dead and dying to the hospital in the back of his van. And the nurse working in emergency who saw her daughter blinded. She wondered about the mothers of the bombers and remembered the three little girls that left their Daddy’s shop that day to go home, heard the bomb go off and got such a fright that they hid in a shed for hours and hours, only turning up way after midnight when everyone was resigned to the fact that they were probably dead. It was hard to suppress tears reading such poignant memories but also hard to believe that only a few years later the incident was eclipsed by an equally horrifying event in New York. This year is the sixth anniversary of 9/11 and for some it will be a powerful reminder of why we went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. For others, however, the detail in their random thoughts will be a reminder that there must be a better way.