Remembering 9/11

 

     Whenever I think of 9/11, the first image that comes to my mind is the sight of that massive tower crashing to the ground.  13 years ago, I watched as streams of firefighters and EMTs marched straight into the World Trade Center, intent on finding and rescuing anyone they could.  Just moments afterwards, the building collapsed.  I clasped my hands over my mouth in terror and looked desperately at my husband, wanting him to somehow assure me that what we had just seen didn't really happen.  But his face was frozen in the same shocked horror as mine.  There would be no reassurances that day, no one to tell us that it didn't really happen.

     After the violent horror, the thing I remember most about the days following 9/11 was the quiet.  I live in California, thousands of miles away from New York, Washington, D.C. and the Pentagon, and here, we staggered around in muted silence.  There were no airplanes, no helicopters, the sky was eerily quiet.  In grocery stores and gas stations, people didn't talk.   An entire nation was clutched in the grips of such deep mourning, that we could barely even look at each other.  But just when things were darkest, hope started to appear. 

     It looked like ash covered firefighters raising the American over twisted metal and broken concrete.  It looked like American flags lining the streets of nearly every town in America.  It looked like people from every walk of life gathering together to bow their heads and pray.

 

 

     It became clear that what the terrorists meant to bring us to our knees and tear us apart in defeat, was in fact going to be exactly what made us stand up and join together as one. 

 

     9/11 wasn't the first time that our nation was roused to unity, it had happened nearly 60 years before in 1941.  My Granny always used to make it a point to tell me about Pearl Harbor when I was a kid.  I always listened to her stories, but a part of me didn't quite understand why it was so important for her to tell me about it every year.  Now I know.  The only way to honor what we lost on that day, is to remember it.  To talk about it, to tell our children and our children's children about that September morning when America stood still, and then took a collective breath and decided to live again.

 

     Where were you when 9/11 happened?  What are the images you remember?  Talk about them with someone today.  Let yourself remember.  And in your remembrance, may you find peace.  May you remember hope. 

 

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

 . . . . . .

 

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.

 

- Maya Angelou