Kevin's Watch

Fifteen years later, some of the details are fuzzy but the feeling is still clear.

I live on the West Coast. We usually don't watch TV in the mornings, but a friend of my wife's called her and told her to turn on the news. Both towers were billowing smoke.

I didn't understand what I was seeing. I couldn't process it.

One of the towers collapsed. I couldn't understand how it could be just gone, how there could be nothing left standing. It took me a while to realize that there were still people inside. Too many people.

The other tower collapsed. I was numb with shock by then. All of this was just too far beyond the limits of experience. I had no idea how to explain all this to my son.

Although we know now that the attacks were restricted to New York and Washington DC, on the day itself, we knew no such thing. Was San Francisco a target? That whole day was one of fear and dread of what might come.

Two days later, we were traveling on one of the first planes to take off from SFO after it reopened. Everyone was extremely tense. I described this to my brother-in-law in Australia, who jeered at the irrationality of being concerned two full days after the attacks. I told him he didn't understand.

9/11 isn't about me. I'm not a New Yorker. I don't live in DC. I don't know anyone who died that day; I don't know anyone who knows anyone who died that day. 9/11 was was not a personal tragedy, and for that I am thankful.

But 9/11 affected all of us. The world changed, and I mourn the people we lost.

HBJ

Good post HBJ. I was watching it from Australia, and it affected us profoundly for many months. It actually strained our relationship in the way that grief can do. It took a long time to process, and a long time to attempt to move on. And that was from afar, so I can't even begin to imagine experiencing anything like this any closer than the other side of the world.

My sister lived in New York then. Well, Brooklyn. But her soon to be husband worked on Wall Street, and they were prevented from leaving for a number of reasons. He saw things that day that he still isn't talking about. He has a hard time of plane rides to this day as well.
My sister volunteered a lot during that time with hospitals and the like. Funny thing...she was also living in L.A. when the L.A. riots happened. She's now living in Florida. So anyone there - be careful.

Hurricane Sister-of-Cag?

I keep expecting a bad one there any day now.

Hard to believe it's been 17 years.

--A

Yes 17 years - but I will never forget being huddled in a conference room watching the towers collapse and wondering if I would be safe driving home. At the time there was some loose speculation Chicago was another possible target. Since I worked not far away from Chicago downtown it of course heightened my anxiety.

Then I remember hearing the silence in the skies after they grounded all planes. It was an eerie reminder of what happened. Then the sounds of planes as they allowed them back in the sky hoping that they would be safe.

All the explosions and debris and fears and anger and anxiety - those feelings I will not forget.

I can't believe we still call it "Nine Eleven" after all these years. Like we can't find a name for what happened, one which captures both the grief and the dedication.

wayfriend wrote:I can't believe we still call it "Nine Eleven" after all these years. Like we can't find a name for what happened, one which captures both the grief and the dedication.

Wow. I never thought of that.

I am surprised at how emotional I still am looking at the photographs.

I was at work in the Adirondacks (our mission agency's world HQ) when I heard about the first plane. I brushed it off, since I knew the Empire State Building had a plane crash into it in the 1945 and that building is still there, so no biggie, right? So when the 2nd plane hit I was just confused and in denial.

A little while later we were called into the auditorium for prayers. I went home and listened to NPR all afternoon and called my Mom, who lived near NYC. My stepdad had thankfully been going in late that day. He worked a few blocks from WTC. He realized as soon as he got on I-95 that something was messed up, and went home.

We had no TV or internet, and I was glad. It was a year before I could handle looking at the pictures, and then I waited till the kids were in bed and looked and looked and cried and cried. NYC was a big part of my growing up, I was there several times a year and loved the City. Still do.

So many years but the pain still lingers.

This year I reflect on these events again. One thing that keeps coming to my mind is the children that were born to parent/s that lost their lives due to the tragedies. They are becoming 18 this year. Leaving their whole childhood without one or possibly both parents. Living in reminder of the events that brought them to adulthood with whatever possible emotional scars.

I look at a distance and feel the events still 18 years later.I cannot even imagine the emotions they have felt all these years. They are now on the cusp of beginning their futures with a haunting emotional tie to their past.

I probably am being too over melodramatic. But oh well...it is just my emotions at this time thinking about how I would feel if I was in their shoes.

Today I pause and hope that they can find some degree of strength or peace or comfort.

Yesterday I saw on social media a new meme that said something to the effect of "18 years ago tonight, 3000 people had dinner with their loved ones for the last time."

On this day every year, Foxnews replays a summary of their broadcast from that morning. They start it at the exact time that they started broadcasting the live feed after the first airplane hits the first tower. Its eerie to watch it as it was occurring.

I made a commitment to come here every year and remind myself and anyone that still thinks about it that the day is still here.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccar ... 7a1879343a

neverforgetproject.com/statistics

+JMJ+


Pamela Colloff @pamelacolloff | Twitter

Doubtless you can all take comfort in the fact that Trump has promised to "hit the Taliban harder than ever before."

After a solemn commemoration at Ground Zero in Manhattan, Trump spoke at a Pentagon event honouring the nearly 3 000 people killed in the attacks - announcing an unprecedented escalation of the military assault on the Taliban.

--A

+JMJ+

Avatar wrote:Doubtless you can all take comfort in the fact that Trump has promised to "hit the Taliban harder than ever before."

After a solemn commemoration at Ground Zero in Manhattan, Trump spoke at a Pentagon event honouring the nearly 3 000 people killed in the attacks - announcing an unprecedented escalation of the military assault on the Taliban.

I noticed this. I'm a bit surprised that more news outlets haven't seemed to run with it.

lorin wrote:I made a commitment to come here every year and remind myself and anyone that still thinks about it that the day is still here.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccar ... 7a1879343a

neverforgetproject.com/statistics

lorin!
thank you.
Love you!

lorin wrote:I look up now. I look up to see potential threats, I look up to allow the rain to cool my face, I look up to see the brilliant blue skies that will forever remind me of 9/11.

That's beautiful. It reminds me of looking out my window one random night, admiring Venus in the evening sky, and seeing two people hurrying home with their eyes on the ground, never looking up to see such beauty enveloping them, the heavens open and naked right above them. They stared at a concrete sidewalk instead. I felt sorry for them, for missing the vastly larger view, and wondered what was it about their lives that made them hurry home with their eyes on their feet. They were utterly inside of themselves, surrounded by a world where they could be Out.

I think this is what 9/11 is about--an awakening. I encourage everyone here to read the article about the Falling Man (above). It's long, but read it all the way to the heart stopping last line. So much of our lives is about looking away. And how can it be otherwise, if we are to be happy? Youth is a perpetual looking away. Love is a looking away. Hope is a looking away. Away from the end. From death. Life is a space we carve out of a vast, dead universe. Cold emptiness surrounds us. The Void. And yet there is beauty in that void. It's the frame for Life, the place where all of this is possible. It's not really empty, because we are here.

I have not noticed this thread until today. I never come to the General forum (everything I want to talk about is too specific ). So this is the first time I'm putting my 9/11 story down, more than a week after the official date, 18 years after the event itself. That morning I was home with my son, who was 8 months old. I held him in my arms while I watched the horror unfold on TV. He didn't understand, of course, and for him the event will always be something that older people remember. That will always be his form of "innocence," even though this is the new brutal reality he was born into. He will have the luxury of thinking about it as something like Pearl Harbor, something that might even bug him every year as the anniversary rolls around and our society shares a collective memory that he can't share, a memory like folklore that tells a tale of sadness that he'd rather not feel. He's too busy living to mourn the dead. He has the luxury of youth: of looking away. And why should anyone begrudge him of this gift? We all had it once. While it's important for us to "Never Forget!" part of me takes heart in the fact that he will Never Remember. An entire generation was born that year into a world of mourning . . . but for them--especially them--it doesn't have to be this way. The world as they knew it didn't come crashing down. They inherit a world like the rest of us: one they can build. One they will build. It can be whatever they want it to be.

I never have to do the math. I always know how long it has been since 9/11. My son is 18 years old this year. 9/11 will always be as old as my son. I will never forget, while he continues to never remember. And that's just fine. I like it that way. He will have his own awakening at some point. Maybe at my death. Maybe sooner. But I take heart at times like this that innocence and hope can be eternally renewed.