9/11/01 is a day that rings out in everyone’s memory; I
remember where I was when I heard the news, what I was wearing, where I went,
and all the calamity and the surreal fear that ensued. Even though, as a
nation, we could not fully comprehend why these tragedies happened or where we
would go from here, as a society, New Yorkers clung together and made the best
out of this we could.
I watched my town, which lost 29 people alone [businessmen
and women, firefighters, volunteer firefighters] breakdown in the chaos and
mourn. But I also saw this same town,
now missing mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and neighbors, band together
and comfort each other the best way we all knew how. There were vigils, ceremonies, bagpipes and sing-alongs,
there were quickly executed fundraisers, and mass efforts to find our missing .
. . ‘missing,’ we all knew they weren’t
missing, they were stolen, ripped from our arms and taken from us. Yet we still clung, clung to hope, clung to
faith and then eventually, clung to their memory.
While as an adolescent I visited these memorial sites often,
sat in solidarity on the beach gazing at the empty hole where our Twin Towers
used to rule the sky, I know more about that day now, 12 years later, than I
did then. I knew my neighbors were never
coming home, I knew somewhere there were children who would never meet nor
remember their parents, I knew there were brothers and sisters who would never
see their siblings again; yet it wasn’t until years later when I moved out of
my town and into a new, equally as tightknit one, that I met these ‘somewhere
people.’ I was able to put a face and a
name to the tragic lives I only knew existed out there. I met girls and boys my age who lost their
siblings and their uncles, and while this event changed all of our lives, their
lives were dictated and shaped by it.
This tragedy was something that affected all those who lived
through it, who saw the events unfold.
No one was safe from it’s impact.
To this day whenever anyone says ‘September 11th’ even just
referencing the specific day of the year, not the 2001 events, chills run down
my spine. We are all different from seeing
those events, but some people, many whom I call friends, have to live with the
differences. Their differences aren’t just
emotional distress, but voids in their everyday activities. Normal life milestones are bittersweet as
they suddenly have loved ones missing from the festivities. It is for these people and all those we lost,
that my heart breaks. I will never be
the same after 9/11, but I know so many families who are altered forever.
I wish my gift to them could be peace of mind, but that is a
naive notion. You never get peace of
mind from something like this; you just go through the forward motion, because
time stops for no one. We should not
just remember the 2,977 people that perished that day; the 343 firefighters, 23
police officers, 37 port authority officers, 2 paramedics, or the 1,000 ill
stricken first responders that have since perished, but we should remember the
families that were left behind to pick up the pieces. We should not only save our remembrance for the
anniversary of the attacks, we should always keep those people in our hearts
and minds. They should be a constant
reminder that life is too short, we
never know when our last day will come, so we should make every effort to let
the people in our lives know how much we love them, know how much of an impact
they have on our world and remember that no matter what, you are better for
having one more day with them.
I know I wouldn’t be the same person I am today without the
people in my life, and I am sure they know that. I know I think about those 3 thousand people
on more than one day a year and I know that many of their stories and the
stories of strength of their resilient families have shaped my life in more
ways than they may realize. In times of
extreme tragedy, the beauty of strength, hope and grace was found. We find strength with every new day, we hope
for better tomorrows, and we find grace in the behaviors of others while we
stumble.
I will leave this blog off with one of my favorite lyrics.
‘Wherever time may
take you in your life, remember this was beautiful.’
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