Twenty-three years ago today, I stood at a hotel window in Burlington, Vermont, watching the impossible unfold on a small television while the mountains outside remained eerily peaceful. My meeting—originally scheduled for Tower One of the World Trade Center—never happened. Instead, our meeting site was changed, so I spent a week in that quiet New England town, surrounded by strangers who became instant family as we all stared at phones and skies empty of contrails.

Now I watch another tragedy unfold—the Kirk children, barely old enough to form memories, reaching for a father who will never return. Their tiny fingers grasping at empty air taps something fundamental in me. I look at photos of my own grandchildren and great grandchildren—twelve beautiful souls who have never known such loss—and feel both profound gratitude and unbearable weight.

I’ve always been an independent and believed in listening across divides, in finding humanity beneath disagreement. Today, as hateful words fly while a family grieves, I wonder if we’ve forgotten that beneath our opinions and politics, we are first and always each other’s keepers. How can hearts that claimed to beat with compassion now pulse with such venom?

Yes, my heart aches today. Family is our beating heart, our sacred trust. Even as bitter words fly across social media today, I pray we might remember our shared humanity—that beneath our disagreements, we all know the sound of a child crying for someone who’s gone forever, and act accordingly.

Such is life I’m afraid.