Remembering September 11

Today marked the sixth anniversary of the attacks on the towers in N.Y. I sat and watched the news today as the long list of people that died that day was read. I watched the loved ones left behind crying, their grief still fresh after six years. As one man simply stated while crying, "I still miss my brother every day. It doesn't get any easier." He is right. I did not lose someone during that attack. I was one of the lucky ones. My husband and my brother-in-law both work in New York City but were lucky not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their offices were not downtown. I remember that day as if it was yesterday. I remember dropping off my young child, while pregnant with another one and remarking on how blue the sky was, as the summer was just ending.

I remember the shock of watching those horrible images on live television. At first, as I turned on the tv, I saw the animation of the twin towers being hit by a plane. I could not believe it. I thought it was a bad joke. Then it registered. I ran to the phone to call my husband. For about three hours I could not get a connection anywhere into the city. The lines were jammed. I thought of going into the city, but then decided to stay by the phone. Roads were blocked, trains stopped running. Planes were not allowed to fly over air space in the city. It was as if we were in a war. Only this war did not make any sense to us, because the people that went to the city to go to work like they did every other day of their lives were the innocent that were killed and sacrificed. For what? I still don't know. Does anyone really?

Three hours later I finally received a brief phone call from my husband telling me he had to stay put somewhere in the city because we just did not know what was going to happen next. He told me he loved me whatever happened next. I later found out that the people that were trapped in some of the top floors in the twin towers called their loved ones and told them they loved them. I wonder if these people knew that would be their last call.

Due to the high technology today, we now have the immediate live visuals of whatever tragic event is happening. I still have burned in my mind the television images of that day: people throwing themselves out the windows of the towers just to end their deaths tragically, the large and thick white clouds coming out of the later crumbling towers, people running in every direction, and the brave faces of the police and firemen who were our heroes and still are. I still remember their faces, some of them not older than twenty or so.

I cannot imagine how the mothers of these lost children felt as they found out they had died that day. I cannot imagine how one deals with this new type of grief when someone dear to you dies so tragically and senseless. I have lost my mom to cancer years ago, and saw her suffer, but at least I had the time to say goodbye and tell her I loved her. These families did not have the chance to say that. Their young children, the born and the unborn, did not have a chance to say that either.

I cannot turn away from the sadness and the grief that is televised today. I cry with everyone else. I grieve for a while with everyone else. I share their pain if only for a little while. I threw my prayers to everyone out there today, hoping that in their grief they could feel that at least for today they are not alone, and that as bad as this world gets sometimes there are many people who do care. And so, I send out my love.