September 11, 2025

By Jamie Towey

Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old father of two, was shot dead yesterday on a Utah college campus in the midst of one of his famous outdoor “Prove Me Wrong” political debates. Two weeks ago, a young man sprayed bullets at school children through the stained-glass windows of a Catholic church in Minneapolis while they were gathered for school Mass. A few days before that, Iryna Zarutska was stabbed from behind by a mentally ill man on a train in Charlotte. And today marks the anniversary of September 11.

The killing of the innocent seems to surround us.

Jamie’s Corner isn’t supposed to be grim or morbid; I’m an optimist by nature, and it would be so much less confrontational or divisive to ignore today’s moribund anniversary and the awful events of the past few weeks and focus attention elsewhere. But I can’t bring myself to write insincerely on a day that mandates sobriety. Death is daring us to stare at it.

America in 2025 is a playground for escapism. We drown in dopamine-triggering apps, shows, posts, and swipes. We all tumble through the 24/7 news cycle like socks in a dryer. Meanwhile, God has been jettisoned, and so people flee to modern shamans – longevity experts and technology evangelists – unable to let go of the deep-seated knowledge innate to the human condition that we truly are immortal. So few have reckoned with their own mortality, and so few are prepared when their time comes.

Today, like September 11 over two decades ago, America seems to be at a turning point. Will the country be shaken from its stupor by these heinous tragedies?

Kirk was 31 with a wife and two kids; I’m 32 with a wife and three kids. I feel like I know a dozen Charlie Kirks in the DC area alone. They look like him, they talk like him, they dress like him. And the innocent children at Annunciation Catholic School? One week before that cold-blooded attack, I walked my oldest son to his first day of kindergarten at our parish school. Only a couple years ago, our parish church was spray painted with anti-Catholic slogans; what’s stopping someone from taking hate a step further at the school?

I won’t belabor my abiding dread over what fate a society faces when it increasingly appeals to performative violence in reaction to political differences or plain old nihilism. And I won’t try to gussy up these tragedies by drawing attention instead to many of the people who showed courage on those days of wrath, although they merit our praise.

But I do want to approach the threshold of hope, because if we abandon hope, we lose everything. There’s a part of dying I don’t talk about much in this column, but has been part of Wish 5 in Five Wishes for almost 30 years – how will you be remembered?

Last weekend, a few of us in the Falls Church office went to a commemorative concert for Mother Teresa of Calcutta at the Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland. It was a transcendentally beautiful tribute to the woman who inspired the very founding of Aging with Dignity. When Mother died on September 5, 1997, her death was not the end. It was a beginning. Mother’s work to love the world’s poor, lonely, and forgotten continues through the hands of thousands of Missionaries of Charity nuns on 6 continents, and in the lives of the millions of people around the world who were inspired by her example, Aging with Dignity included. 43 million Americans have found peace at the end of life that might not have had our founder, Jim Towey (my father) not known her.

I’m sure that if many of us looked at the loved ones we’ve lost in our own lives, we’d recognize that as life goes on for the living, the lingering effects of death give way to the fragrance of something good, something beautiful.

I don’t know what will come from these recent tragedies. School shootings are an increasingly common feature of our news cycle, Iryna is yet another smiling photo of a tragic victim to violent crime, and Charlie Kirk, despite being the most prominent political figure to be assassinated since Robert F. Kennedy, feels like an inevitable victim given the attempted assassination of President Trump last summer, and the shootings of Minnesota state politicians three months ago. Indeed, I’m jarred by the paradox: these deaths shock, yet they feel familiar.

But, out of death, life. It’s possible. We have two choices: allow the death spiral to suck us further into violence and vitriol, or unwaveringly stand for Truth.

Truth is at the heart of our mission here at Aging with Dignity, and Truth is what we’ll continue to advocate. Each of us must commit to standing unflinchingly on the side of Truth while seeking to follow the example of Mother Teresa of Calcutta: to love and be loved.

The concert last weekend featured Gabriel Fauré’s iconic setting of the Requiem Mass. Its words echoed in my head yesterday and today. Let us entrust Charlie Kirk, Iryna Zarutska, the Minnesota state senator and her spouse, and the precious children of Annunciation Catholic School to eternity with the In Paradisum requiem prayer:

In paradisum deducant te angeli

May the Angels lead you into paradise

(The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Aging with Dignity and/or its Board of Directors.)