Our Heroes

We don’t know why bad things happen,

our hearts can’t begin to touch the pain.

Some things seem just so senseless,

as we are left with nothing but disdain.

And yet we find the heroes

in the darkest times of trouble,

they seem to rise above the rest

amidst the broken rubble.

They make us believe in good again,

they make us want to fight!

Through the blackest part of dark,

they  help us see the light.

Here’s to all those souls

that run into unknown danger,

those ones we now call heroes

who once to us were strangers.

Diane Reed

2013

After 911 I was positive that the blast I heard outside of our little store in 2003, was a bomb. In fact, I had no doubt. At the time, we were in the midst of all the Terrorist scares and it never occurred to me that it was anything else. Though it happened to be an earthquake that rocked our little town and destroyed our building, killing two women as they ran out of the store next to ours. They were found between our car (that my daughter had asked to wait in) and another. I will forever be grateful that my daughter decided to come inside that day and help me open. (But that is another story that you can find on my ABOUT page here on my post.) The thing that I want to touch on today is not the tragedies themselves, man-made or natural disasters, but the heroes that rise from them. When I finally got out of my store after the earthquake and had been reunited with my family, I ran over to my car where strangers were pulling bricks off of it and cried out to them, “Oh thank you so much but there is no one in that car!” That memory still brings grateful tears as I thank God for all the choices that were made that day that saved my daughter.

The thing that I remember most about that day, is how all of the strangers band together. Neighboring merchants became family as did the customers that had been there. Years later, there still is an unspoken bond that seems hard to break. I will never forget all the bonding that went on in our local park that day, as we waited for instructions for what would come next.  But even more, are those heroes that ran into the dust trying to save the trapped and hurt. Funny how character really seems to kick in during those horrific times.

I write this for  all the unsung heroes that may never know the ones they saved the day their hearts just kicked into gear. I am grateful that those men pulling bricks off of my car didn’t save my daughter that day because she was not in it. But God forbid, they may have… and I know that their hearts were out to save anybody in need that day.

I saw “that” same kind of courage in the Boston clips. The ones running towards danger… the ones putting their lives on the line for total strangers!

I think one of the most moving statements that I have read so far has come from comedian Patton Oswalt’s Facebook page. He is typically known for his sardonic, witty posts about current events, but I think he said it better than anyone else here :

 “I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, ‘Well, I’ve had it with humanity,   “But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopath. But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out … So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, ‘The good out number you, and we always will.”                Patton Oswalt

Bottom line is that GOOD outweighs evil. Always!