9/11 - We've Reached the Top

At first I thought - no I won't write about it.  I was not directly involved.  I did not lose a loved one.  I don't have a valid reason to speak about my memories of that day.  But as I thought about it more, I realized that like almost all Americans, I was involved with the tragedy of the day.  I did lose something.  I do have memories.  So, I thought I would share them here and perhaps you may also have memories to share.

I used to think it was peculiar when people would say, "I remember where I was when I heard the news about ____ (fill in the blank for some particular event)".  I would think it was somewhat silly.  Who cares where they were when they heard something.  Why would that be so memorable?  Well, I understand it now. 

For me, it was while I was driving into work.  I was listening to the radio and the most important thing on my mind was getting to Whole Foods to get my lunch before I began my day.  Music was playing and then the show host came on saying something about an airplane that had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.  'Wow,' I thought, thinking of some small airplane piloted by an amateur, 'What a stupid move on the pilot's part.'  I barely gave it another thought as I went into the store and made my purchases.  I came back out and the show hosts were still talking about the initial crash and how another plane had hit the other tower.  As I continued driving the news became much more grim and my mind began to grasp that this was an attack.  An actual willful act, not an accident.  We were under attack.  What exactly did that mean?

I kept thinking as I was driving that it was all going to be okay.  They were going to put these fires out and it was going to be awful, but it was going to be okay.  It was going to be okay.  And then the first building fell.  I remember exactly where I was.  I was driving down the most beautiful part of my trip to work.  Along both sides of the street were these beautiful towering oak trees whose upper canopies met to form an amazing arch of dappled shade and tranquility.  There I was surrounded by beauty as the radio broadcast the tower falling.

In that moment I knew that it was not going to be okay.  As quickly as I could I went home listening to the radio divulge the horror of that morning.  My husband met me at the door.  He had watched it all on the TV.  I sat with him and we watched it happen together.  We grieved together for the loss of life - as distant and detached from it as we were, we still grieved as if we had lost members of our own family.

That was one of the first things that was hard to reconcile.  I felt tremendous grief and loss.  This quickly became something I kept to myself because it was as if I did not have a right to this grief.  I personally did not know anyone in the Towers.  I did not know any of the firefighters or police officers who died.  Yet, I was struck down with it as if I did know these people.  Every account I read about or heard brought me to a point of empathy that had me experiencing the loss of the loved one.  Although I am sure I am not alone in this and others who were not personally involved felt this way, I learned to conceal it.  It quickly became apparent that there was a litmus test as to who was allowed to visibly grieve.  If you did not know someone who was there, then you were just 'show-boating' and your sadness was just an attention ploy.  So I kept my sadness to myself.

That day and the weeks after were spent in a fruitless effort of trying to find out enough information to make sense of it all.  The local paper did not have the answers so I purchased copies of foreign newspapers hoping they could tell us more.  Nothing we read, nothing we watched, nothing we listened to on the radio did anything to lift the veil but rather it surrounded us with information about the world that we had been blissfully ignorant of before.

It is almost as if I had been living my life asleep at the wheel and this event woke me up.  This awakening was not friendly because at first it seemed that I was awakened to a house on fire.  Everything decision seemed crucial and every event seemed magnified.  I had not been paying attention and now my world was changed. 

I won't bore you with all the details of me becoming aware of the world in which I lived, but suffice it to say I developed an interest in news feeds that have not been watered down by the opinions of those reporting.  I found out where my local news gets their information from and I drink from that unsullied well.  I learned to search back to the source for almost every bit of information in order to evaluate its validity.  I learned to create my own opinions based on those facts and resist heartily following anyone else's point of view.  I also, thankfully, have learned to keep my mouth shut about what I think because it very often differs from what other people think.  I value what other people think, even when I disagree with them.  I appreciate the freedom we all have to think these different things.

Before this devolved any further into how 9/11 was my personal catalyst.  Let me end with a remembrance of those who sacrificed the most that day 10 years ago.  This political cartoon touched me then and it still does today.  So I leave you with this: