I heard two women on the plane next to me have a brief conversation. One woman served in Afghanistan and was returning home after a year and a half. She was going to have a month off before she would have to return. Both were the same age. The second was making a brief visit home from college. These two women were like a classic tale of what if you made a different choice in your life, where would you be? Both had no kids, no significant other, just their parents. The only difference was the woman serving in Afghanistan had a brother and the other had a sister.

So they had this little small talk for a bit then the visiting from college said, “So I bet your life had changed in the past two days.” She had that Ra Ra USA sound in her voice, the voice heard on countless media outlets the past few days. You could imagine this girl would have been on top of some strange guy's shoulders in some impromptu shout session that happened right after the announcement. She was of the young group who knew of the war but didn't feel pain of the war, of the collapsed building in New York.

The woman serving in Afghanistan gave a tired smile, like she had been asked this many times and said, “Not really, I'm still being shipped out in a month.” There was no cheering from her, no jumps for joy. In the same vein, when the plane I was supposed to board landed, about 40 marines disembarked from the plane. Some were in work uniforms, some in dress uniforms but the majority were in civilian clothes. Only the short hair and the camouflage duffel bags gave them up as marines. Now I don't know if there was an announcement on the plane about the marines, this had been done in the past, but there wasn't any of the Coca Cola moments when they disembarked. No parades, no old veterans walking up to shake their hands, no significant other coming to be held. These were guys just ready to do their jobs.

What I saw with the two women, so similar yet different in their perspective, is similar to an article written in the LA Times. If you are a young person, the father away you are from the events and aftermath of 9/11, the happier you are for bin Laden's death. With people who were associated with the event, or who now serve because of the event, you really don't have closure. The memories of missing loved ones won't be back, the memories of living through that day in New York or Washington, the daily grind of being in a war because of what happened and losing friends from the war, those are images that can't be erased by the killing of one man. The damage has been done.

The only good takeaway from this is it seems while there were many who rejoiced at the time, as time goes on there is reflection and in the sober light of day we realize bin Laden's death hasn't changed much.