Remembrance

Where were you?

That is the question that people ask about that day. I was working in a public school in downtown Dallas, and had just checked on the 5th graders in their special area classes. A teacher came running down the hall yelling "We're at war! Someone has attacked the World Trade Center!" My first thought was to shut this woman up so we didn't have widespread panic and confusion among the impressionable young children within earshot of her hysteria. My second thought was. Oh, my God, please, no.
I will never forget.

We set up a television in the school library workroom so that teachers could come get updates during their off-periods, and got it up and running just in time to see the plane fly into the second Tower, live. I remember feeling that it couldn't be real, but alarmingly, I knew it was. We also watched as both Towers fell, live.
I will never forget.

When I got home that afternoon I, my husband, and a friend of ours walked to the local 7-11 to pick up the special edition of the Dallas Morning News that had all the photos, and the latest updates. There were dozens of people milling around outside waiting for the issue to arrive. What struck me was the the absence of planes overhead, which was unprecedented. The quietness, the somberness, and the general peacefulness of our little neighborhood in the midst of this tragedy was deafening.
I will never forget.

My mother was in the last stages of her battle with lung cancer at the time, and I remember feeling so sad, and a bit angry, that her last months on earth were marked by the experience of such misery all around. She died in December, and the Trade Center attacks were still front page news. She had become addicted to CNN, as had many others, and every time I saw or spoke to her she was upset by the needless misery spoken about and the vivid images broadcast.
I will never forget.

My husband had a business trip to New York in late November of that year, and came back with amazing stories and pictures of the cleanup efforts. We had planned a trip to the city to visit friends for New Year's Eve before the attacks and before my mother's death. We kept our plans and had a nice time. The city was very subdued, and there was an anxiousness to people on the street, just under the surface. It was, and still is, a changed place. It was a very emotional trip for me personally, and I got immensely drunk on Sangria at a Spanish restaurant the night before New Year's Eve.
I will never forget.

My husband and I have a tradition that whenever we travel somewhere, we always purchase something indigenous to the area to bring back to display at home. The art piece pictured above was created by John Suchy, an artist born and raised in Brooklyn. This was our memory piece from that trip.
I will never forget.

I pray that on this 5th anniversary, each person who has been touched by this tragedy is beginning to find some measure of closure and peace.

I will never forget.