I will never forget
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This post seems trivial and meaningless as I read over it. I wasn’t in New York on Sept. 11 and I don’t directly know anyone who passed away on that day, but I wanted to share my heart a bit with you today and I’d like you to share your heart with me in the comments. Where were you? Where were your children? Do you think it is possible to ever forget that day in our history after having lived through it? I wasn’t affected directly, but like so many, I was forever changed.
We had been listening to a cassette tape of Bear In The Big Blue House. It had a song on it that Brady and I listened to each morning on the way to take him to my mother’s house so I could get to class. Ricky worked in Huntsville so he went one way and I headed the other, for my hour and a half commute to Florence, Alabama four days a week. Fortunately, Mama’s was a good halfway point so my two year old didn’t have to sit in the car nearly as long.
As the last strains of our song played, I hit eject to listen to the radio a bit in the last ten minutes or so until we got to Mama’s house. I turned it up when they were talking about the plane and listened intently, taking a minute or two to catch up on the details and figure out why everyone sounded so strained.
My first thought was disbelief. It just had to be one of those War of the World things. I felt anger rolling inside me at what I thought must be a sick joke, but they dj’s continued, so I called Mama. “Can you turn on the tv? They’re saying an airplane flew into the world trade center.” Mama asked “Huh? I haven’t heard anything about that. When? ” As she was turning the channels, I was slightly relieved, thinking if she didn’t know about it then it was most likely a joke. She found it a moment later and sat down to gather all of the details as we both sat silently on the phone together. “Oh Christy, I see it. It’s awful.”
“Are you serious? So it’s really real?” We had a minute or two to discuss what could have possibly caused it, our first thought went to it being some freakish radar glitch that caused the pilots to miscalculate…and then Mama said “Oh God, another one just went in!”
I was at her house a minute or two later with Brady and we both sat down in front of the tv while he toddled over to a familiar bucket of toys in her living room. It wasn’t long before we realized the sinister truth of the plane crashes as other events began to unfold.
I called my professor and said “What am I supposed to do? Do I come to class? Are they closing the university?” It was silly to worry about missing class but I was still in shock. She told me to be wherever I needed to be, so I told her I needed to be with Brady and spent the day at my mother’s house watching the horror unfold, each of us taking breaks to play with Brady, fix his lunch, and spend a few minutes pretending everything was alright for the two year old who had no idea everything wasn’t.
That night I finally drove home with Brady and put him to bed but there was no way I could sleep. Ricky had been watching all day at his work and he and I sat down together, going over the news and wondering what would happen next. Watching the people jump off again and again in replayed footage. The pain of an entire country seemed to hang in the air and we found ourselves unable to sleep, like so many of the rest of the world.
Instead, I spent a few hours writing a letter to my son. I needed him to know what happened, how it felt at that moment, what it was really like. I wanted him to understand in a way that a kid looking back and reading about it in a history book just wouldn’t. I wrote him for over an hour, ending up with a 30+ page letter describing just where he was and what was going through his mother’s mind when the planes hit. I tried to explain the pain, the fear, the tragedy and the loss. I explained what it was like seeing those people jump. I explained what it was like seeing the people doing all they could to rescue others. I described the firefighters, the policeman, the people in the street, how they all turned into heroes that day. I did the best I could to give him an account of what that day in his life was like through the eyes of his mother. How we all held our breath and waited to see where the next attack would take place. How I looked outside and wondered where I could possibly run with my beautiful little baby to keep him safe.
When I’d ran out of words and realized that some emotions just couldn’t be expressed- I sealed that letter, wrote his name on the front, and dated it 9-11-2029, deciding that he needed to be close to the age I was when I wrote it before my words would be able to carry the weight I needed them to. I couldn’t help but hope that by the time he did read it, our world would be so very different from that day that the violence and horror would seem foreign to him outside of my letter.
A few weeks later we took Brady to the Nashville Zoo. As we were walking around we heard a plane fly over and Ricky and I both froze in place and looked at each other while we held our breath and scanned the horizon. I’ll never forget that feeling in the pit of my stomach as I clutched Brady’s tiny hand and said a silent prayer until the sound of the plane engine dissipated. Even now, whenever I hear a plane fly over the house in the quiet hours of evening I hold my breath. I know many of you do the same.
We made a lot of promises ten years ago, one of the key ones being that we would never forget but if you were alive ten years ago. I can’t imagine we could ever possibly forget exactly where we were and what that day was like.
In honor of all who lost their lives on September 11th, God Bless America.
I remember.
September 11th is my birthday and I usually felt like celebrating it, but not that day, My sister and I were on the phone talking about her husband.,s illness, and my husband who was at work beeped in on my phone and told me to watch tv because something awful had happened. It was so horrific I could barely stand to watch it,yet I was glued to the tv the rest of the day until my sister called me back and told me her husband had multiple myeloma as the results of his lab test (which is a blood and bone cancer). We were devastated for everything that day, and since then my birthdays have never been the same. Today has been a sad birthday for me, reliving it all in my mind…
I was sitting in Mrs. Luedtke’s sophomore English class. Towards the end of class she received a phone call and turned on the news. We seen what was going on but really didn’t know what had happened. After watching for a few minutes the bell rang and we went to the next class. I walked into Mr. Rupp’s science class who also had the news on and shortly after walking into the classroom, we watched in horror as the second tower had fallen.
A dear and precious person in my life, Sharon, worked at the Pentagon until just 3months prior to the attacks. It was her time to retire and she did so reluctantly. Had she been working, she may have been seriously injured or killed. She lost a few co-workers that day. I am thankful everyday that she is alive and well. My thoughts and prayers are with all those whose lives have been affected.
Beautiful tribute. We really will never forget
I have the hardest time with these anniversary dates – this one especially, but even those for Hurricane Karina and Camille, two horrible hurricanes that devastated my area of the Gulf Coast and left me and others fully traumatized in a way that we will never ever forget. I wasn’t in New York at the time, though there were people in the building I had worked with through my law firm, and I know in my heart I could not even go to ground zero ever because I would feel the loss deep in my soul. So I just try to solemnly honor these days quietly in my heart. Sept. 11th was a horrible, horrible, and shocking day. I’ll never forget that’s for sure.
That should be KATRINA our course – apparently my eyeballs aren’t working all that great today!
I was at home, but due to work the 2nd shift as an R.N. for a Blood Center in N.J. collecting blood. When I arrived, I was both surprised and shocked to see crowds of people standing outside our building entrance waiting to donate blood. There were so many people in the lobby, it was hard for be to get through. “Excuse me, excuse me, I work here, may I get through- Thank-you”.
We collected so much blood that day, maybe 100-200 pints and the next day all staff had to come in early and scheduled a mandatory 8:00am to 8:00pm.
A local Starbucks store donated a huge carafe of coffee/ snacks and came back to refill it. a Also, a tent was donated for the people waiting outside.
Christy , as an update, I still work at the same Blood Center 10 years later and I worked today at a blood Mobile for the Knight of Columbus. We were overwhelmed with the number of donors that came out to donate blood today, and I had to call have to have more supplies sent and coolers for the blood. Many of the donors had a story to tell, for example 1.) his brother is a firefighter in NYC. 2.) Another man, Mr. Delre, told me that he worked on 6th Ave.in N.Y.C. and that he stayed at his place of business for 3 days sleeping in the Board room because he could not get out of NYC to his home in N.J.; he also said that he saw a neighbor of his on that day but did not recognize him until he wiped his eyes because he was covered in black soot from head to toe- this gives me chills. I swallowed hard when I heard that. At my job today, at 12:59pm , we read a statement passed by the Senate.
May I have your attention please. In July, the Senate passed a resolution asking all Americans around the country that on this day at 1:00pm, a moment of silence be observed in memory of the victums and tragedy on September11, 2001. The Blood Center of New Jersey in compliance with that resolution would now ask everyone to join us in observing a moment of silence for the victims,families, and the country as we observe the tenth anniversary of the tragedy. After the full minute passed, everyone was thanked.
My life forever changed. While I have moved one town away, and I am so thank-ful that in the mist of tragdy I did not take someones harsh words to heart because he was so VERY wrong! My life supporting someone very special that I met just months later after 9/11 I wouldn’t change for the world! God’s grace in Providing LOVE, support, and in a unique way! I was working at a living history museum. I had to go in front of students from CA who didn’t know if their principal was on one of the flights out of DC, and should have been on the one that crashed. Due to a kid being bad he had to get off and take care of the issue! It was the hardest performance I ever did, and I hope those students never forget!
I was asleep, my husband called me from his work, I wwatched it on the tv for several hours and cried, even way up here several thousands of miles from New York, I knew thing would never be the same. The airports being shut down meant no flights over the house, the silence was errie. And someone else wrote that it felt familiar and then she realized it was like the day Kennedy was shot, I was home sick from school that day and watching live coverage and yes it was similar. My deeply ingrained picture of the 11th was the picture of people streaming across the bridges on foot, covered in dust, shocked and deeply grieving but determined. I said to my husband when he had woke me up and I had first seen the horrible pictures, that the world just changed and it did.