On the weekend of the third anniversary of the crash of Flight 93, I traveled the short trip to Shanksville, Pa. While there, I began -- like all visitors do -- to take photographs of a memorial that was created not by a government mandate but by the hands of a grateful nation.

 

As I captured the images in my digital camera, a  song began to involuntarily go through my head. I began to respectfully hum "Tuesday Morning" by Melissa Etheridge.

 

"Now, you can not change this.....you can not erase this...you can pretend this is not the truth..."

 

The last time I had been to the crash site I had taken a good friend with me who is a huge Melissa Etheridge fan. The site moved her to tears and when Melissa released her latest album, because she and I had seen the crash site for the first time together, my friend told me about the song and told me to pay close attention to it. When I heard the song for the first time, I was taken back to the scenes of my first visit to the memorial site with my friend.

 

Now, on this particular weekend, I was thinking of the song as I was back at the crash site. As I rounded a corner to look at another section of the wall, the tune in my head stopped, like someone had abruptly lifted a needle from a record.

 

There, in a plastic sleeve and wired to the chain link fence were the lyrics I had been humming for the better part of an hour. I stood frozen for a few minutes, read the words, actually lifted a hand up and touched them and then my thoughts turned to the person who had written it. Melissa Etheridge must have felt so passionate about the message that she wanted it to reach ears that would learn from it. Seeing the lyrics pinned to the wall, I was struck by the impression that her message finally got through...some angel had delivered it and pinned it to the wall....among the t-shirts, hats, pins, crucifixes, and messages from children and prayers from the holy are the typed lyrics to this song that pay homage to a forgotten hero of that day.

 

Her song tells his story and that story is now told in black and white at the crash site.

The memorial site itself is a surreal spot. When people think of the site they think of it being a distant and remote field in the middle of nowhere not close to anything. By car, that may seem the case. By air, it was closer and scarier than one might think. Two more minutes by air and the plane would have been over where I now live. A mere 10 minutes and it would have reached it's intended target.  Standing on the hill that overlooks where the plane nose-dived at 500 mph, you will see the crash was indeed deliberate and exercised with precision accuracy. If something had not been done in that very moment when it was done, the results of a plane crash anywhere else but that field would have been catastrophic.

 

From the makeshift memorial created from a public outpouring, you will feel the ghosts of all 40 passengers and crew members, their presence watching over you as you look at their names engraved in park benches and painted on angels wearing red white and blue. You feel oddly surrounded by warmth and love when you read what others have left behind -- a toy airplane signed by the children of the Shanksville Elementary School that reads "thank you for not letting the plane hit our school" and handprints from children with a message that reads "thank you for saving the future." There are Catholic rosaries and stars of David, confederate flags lying next to the yellow human rights equal sign on its banner of blue. The day I was there, there were children, adults, black men in biker gear, a man in Bermuda shorts gripping the hand of his wife while he sobbed.

 

The memorial site -- like the day we all remember so vividly -- changes you. You will walk away realizing that "you can not change this, you can not erase this, and you can pretend this is not the truth." But the truth -- unchanged and unerased -- is forever a part of a small Pennsylvania town and forever a part of us all.