Never stop mourning the horror of that September day

When the news broke that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the “principal architect” of the 9/11 attacks, will finally stand trial on Jan. 11, 2021 at Guantanamo Bay, I read good news and the bad news.

The good news: the possibility of some sort of justice for the 2,976 dead and their families.

The bad news: the irony of labeling this murderer the “architect” of the terrorist attacks, the man whose mission was to shake the foundation of America. What is the shape of our foundation now? Where is the America that came together as one color, one class, one generation, one gender, one faith and one people?

The New York Times reported the trial as “Moving toward a final reckoning.”

There can be no reckoning after the worst terrorist strikes in U.S. history. Our story of horror, heroes, and the resolve not to give in to the killers, and the pain of nearly 3,000 families who lost their loved ones in Manhattan, Washington and Pennsylvania, has no ending. While this is a case of rage and retribution, there can be no reckoning, nor should there be.

I cannot begin to comprehend the suffering, I did not lose anyone. My memory is not of the last kiss goodbye I would ever receive from my loved one as they left for work that morning, nor the voice on a cellphone from the man I love as he plunged to his death as a hero on Flight 93. There is no

reckoning for them.

My daughter, an NYU student living in lower Manhattan, ran into the street and witnessed office workers, trapped by the intense heat and heavy smoke, leaping hundreds of feet to their deaths. What’s seen cannot be unseen.

Ironically, her older sister would coproduce the HBO documentary “Through A Child’s Eyes: September 11, 2001,” to help children of America heal. I don’t want my heart healed. The crack is filled with piercing eyes mirroring the souls of firefighters, police, EMTS, volunteers who made an impromptu memorial along a makeshift path of ash, composed of more than the remains of buildings. I cherish the shoes that I wore on that walk that once were black. I can feel the caustic sting of destruction that seared our nostrils. The silence was deafening.

I stood in front of a relatively new president, George W. Bush, as he stepped up on a pile of debris, grabbed a megaphone and hoisted, retired city firefighter Bob Beckwith beside him. When one of the workers screamed from the back, “George, we can’t hear you!” The president shot back, “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon!”

The following days were some of the proudest in our history. We stood shoulder to shoulder and examined our own lives and our values. The world had stopped and now it and we were different. On the day declared by the president as a national day of remembrance, he sent another message: “This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing.” That hour may be soon.

There will be pain as we sit through the live feeds and see the faces of evil. Bring it.

Today, we kiss our children goodbye as they leave for school and wonder: Will they return?

The target of terrorism is not a body count, it’s our sense of security, safety, self, and belonging to each other. Where is that now?

Don’t let the dust settle on 9/11.