As I arrived at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on an ugly, grey-skied day, I made myself focus on who I was there to remember, who I was there to honor. Our car had been experiencing difficulties the entire four hundred mile road trip and it had just failed to start as we left one area of the property set aside in this giant field. Now at the Visitor Center and about to view the site where lives were lost, I was angry with not the radiator but myself. An automobile does not compare to people being killed. 
Of course I know this. But I am a flawed human being. I worry about things that I should not. I wondered if the roles were reversed, would any of the crew or passengers on that United airplane be at this sacred place distracted by job, financial or family issues as they took in the vastness and former nothingness prior to the devastation of that September morning.
As I made my way down the walkway that lies directly beneath the 757’s flight path before the crash, the four-wheeled vehicle was forgotten. I will never know what those 44 souls would be carrying with them had they been there to pay their respects. And I hope and pray that I will never know if I would be as brave as they on a beautiful blue-skied day.
