We are compelled to look back on this day.

Mostly because it is the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 – this is being written on Sunday.

But also because the world has lost its most compelling monarch, who was a bridge to a past that is setting sail with her death.

Good-bye, Elizabeth II.

Fare thee well.

Though our opinions of her will differ, I acknowledge here that, to me, she was an example of commitment and duty. Yes, her commitments came with some impressive fringe benefits. But her example is worth noting. She shouldered more than a nation; she shouldered, in many ways, the world.

With her passing, things that had been invisibly held together will, in some cases, break apart.

It will be a new world.

We faced a new world 21 years ago too.

The day before, passenger jets destroyed two of the world’s tallest buildings. Others dove into the Pentagon and plummeted into the earth in Pennsylvania.

Thousands of people died.

We called it our generation’s Pearl Harbor because this country had been attacked.

The crisis brought us together.

So much is now in the rear view.

Including the comradery that enveloped this country in the wake of all that carnage.

Twenty-one years ago, on the day after 9-11, there was a tendency to embrace our Americanism.

Our patriotism.

Where, I wonder, did it go?

Jane Curtis is interim editor of the Daily Freeman-Journal.