In Rememberance

I spent a lot of yesterday thinking about that fateful day 8 years ago, when our world stood still.

Some time has passed, and although I really appreciate Obama's legislation making September 11th a Day of Service (as opposed to a national holiday) I really do feel that the visceral memory is starting to slip from our consciousness.

I'm not trying to condemn anyone, but checking my friend's facebook statuses, I had a hard time finding any mention of the events of 8 years ago. This struck me as sad.

Now I consider myself very fortunate. I did not know any of the victims of this attack personally. I was not in the city that day. But I could have been, and I was only 20 minutes away.

I never want to forget any of the terrible details of that day. I never want to forget turning on the television before class that morning, which for some reason didn't have any sound, but just a picture of the first tower, smoking. And then I watched the second plane hit. And then our campus shut down. We were so close to the city. We watched on television as people started jumping out of the towers. And then we watched the towers fall. Our cell phones didn't work, because one of the major cell towers was located on top of the Twin Towers. We couldn't call our family or our friends, even from landlines, to let them know we were okay. We heard there were attacks on the Pentagon and somewhere in Pennsylvania, another plane crashed.

I remember going to the D/T office and watching Dan wheel a television into the hallway. The friend I was with started crying, and Dan gave her a big hug. I'd never seen him hug anyone before.

Classes were cancelled for a week. We couldn't leave campus. We sat in groups in front of CNN, watching in horror as rescue workers tried to douse the fires and find survivors. We cleaned out our cabinets, donating all of our canned goods and some of our tools. We listened to theories and conspiracies and often would hear wailing in the night, as classmates learned that a loved one had died. We watched fine ash from the towers, carried by the wind, settle on our campus. Some people even found papers from the Towers, caught in tree branches.

I wondered if television would ever show anything but news again, as every channel was news, 24 hours a day. I wondered if we would ever laugh again, ever feel safe again.

And of course we did. We began to pick ourselves up, go back to class and even laugh again.

My experience doesn't even touch the level of grief and fear that people closer to the attacks had. But for those people and for the people who's lives were taken in this senseless and cowardly attack, I want to remember.

So I hope this day continues to be a day of reflection and memory, of service and gratitude for the brave souls whose lives were taken so senseless eight years ago.