At least not here. Today is the 22nd anniversary of 9/11. I had no clue how I would deal with it this year, particularly after last year. Then I turned on 60 Minutes last night to see video and images that brought it all back. Some I had never seen before. Some I had. All reminded me that it just happened yesterday, at least in my mind.
Comment or not. Care or not. I care. And even if this has grown tiresome to you, I will not forget.
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Brief and heartfelt, from a hinterlands animal shelter near me this morning. Maybe it will pass your filtering policies:
We will never forget.
❤ Twin Towers 🤍 Shanksville 💙 The Pentagon
We all know where we were on this day.
In memory of the all of the people that lost their lives, their Families and all of us who share in the heartache, we stand strong and honor each and every one of you.
We also honor those two legged and four legged heroes, who risked their lives to save complete strangers…..heroes unlike any other. We are honored to stand by your side.
Never forget……
My parents and grandparents could tell me where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor being attacked. We should tell our children and grandchildren, so they never forget that vigilance is the price of peace.
My daughter came to me last night, with a last-second assignment she had forgotten to complete for school: Interview someone about where they were and what they remember about 9/11.
Like her, I was running late, having not ever figured out time management.
That was how I found myself running late to a calendar call in the basement of 60 Centre Street, getting out at WTC on the E as the planes hit the towers above me.
In many ways, it was a different world before and after. But for my middle school daughter, it was a historical event, much like Pearl Harbor must have been for me.
Someday, my kids will likely understand, even as I hope someday never comes.
Remembering the people, my friends and neighbors that didn’t make it. Hug your kids.
Make the world a happier place for a minute.
I had just come back from class at the Naval Academy. My roommate was watching CNN, and one of the towers was on fire. We watched the second plane hit together. I’ll never forget.
Can’t forget. Don’t want to. Too many friends and acquaintances died that day. Just for going to work. All too often, we don’t remember the horror and disbelief.
My father died the previous year, my mother several months thereafter, then 9/11. I was dressing for work on that day when my boyfriend, watching the news on TV in the den, screamed for me. Work was cancelled for everyone. I never left the house. Aside from being glued to the news for days, the close proximity of my parents death to each other, then 9/11 victims, was too much to bear. I sunk in deep depression, the darkness that accompanies life was introduced to me first time ever, and it hit very hard for the holidays that year. So 9/11 was my: grow up year, mom and dad are no longer here, put on your big boy boots, be a leader. I still miss mom and dad but am grateful as immigrants they did not live to see America being attacked by terrorists.
We do not forget either, Scott. I haven’t written a long remembrance in the last two years on my own blog, but every year, I try to watch some of the ceremony at the WTC. And every year, I can only watch for a few minutes before I start crying again.
Every year on 9/11, my husband flies the American flag from our house with his fire helmet under it as a sign of respect for the 343 in FDNY who lost their lives that day. And every year, I remember working with the Red Cross in the weeks following that attack, and seeing the faces of the firefighters’ wives when they got ready to be taken down to Ground Zero… some still with hope in their eyes, and some just steeling themselves, and me realizing it could have been me and every other firefighter’s wife in their place.
Two years ago, on 9/11, my husband told me that there were then 65 members of FDNY who were the children of firefighters who lost their lives on 9/11.
We remember, Scott. And will for as long as we live.
I was walking past a TV at work, saw a plane hitting the towers and thought it was special effects, then I saw,the news and realized it wasn’t. Being on the West Coast after years away from New York made it less personal but still shocking.
The legacy of 9/11 has left me mistrustful of our government from the USA Patriot Act through the faked excuses for invading Iraq and the revelations of the evil done in the name of “Homeland Security”.
God bless and have mercy on the USA
I know where I was. I’ll never forget.
But I just had a conversation with a few twenty-and-thirty somethings. The never heard of Todd Beamer, flight 93 or what a handful of very brave men did on that day. I sent them to their phones and watched as they gaped at what they read.
I did all I could to not cry.
I’ll never forget. Every year I make sure to tell my kids, now 14 and 10, what the world was like 21 years, 364 days ago and how much it changed 22 years ago to the day. I didn’t know what to do when one of my kids came home from elementary school with a book about 9/11. I felt very conflicted, both wanting and not wanting to read it. I left my heart in NYC. The feelings and memories I have about NYC and particularly about 9/11 are not fit to print, especially in a kids’ book.
Some of us have anniversaries that fall on that date–others have birthdays and other reasons to celebrate before Al Qaeda turned September 11 into a forever horror show. Some of us in this situation hated the hype around the 11th of September as early as 2002, and felt a sense of relief when twenty years had past and the idea of celebrating on our anniversary or birthday on its actual date was again possible as we did in the decades before 2001. Osama bin Laden stole September 11th from us–is us getting it back more than ten years after his death and twenty years after he stole that date from us really too much to ask?
The collective trauma of 22 years ago is receding for those that survived, there are billions alive now that never experienced the 11th of September 2001, and humanity has largely returned to the “normal” fact that remembering the death and horror of an event years past is usually a very private affair. One’s world may have seemed to have collapsed on that day in February where one’s mother died and in May when one’s father died, but that tragedy is not often felt by those outside of family and friends and will never make the evening news years after the death occurs–even if both of those deaths were from a far deadlier worldwide cataclysm, such as a novel coronavirus.
So forgive those of us that are happy that Al Qaeda’s grip on September 11th has diminished enough that those of us that want to celebrate our anniversaries and birthdays on September 11 2023 can finally do so without necessarily triggering the horror and trauma in those that survived that day in 2001. Apologies that the past ability to suffer collectively on September 11 has given way to the age-old reality that trauma is suffered in silence, but raging at the New York Times won’t change this reality.
Interesting. In the past, I assumed you were merely a lonely, verbose, boring ignoramus. Now I see you’re also a terminal narcissist, angry that national tragedy blunted your special moment. I wonder what other pathologies are in there that have yet to reveal themselves?
Normally, I trash Joseph’s comments, as they’re long, tedious and mindnumbingly stupid. I decided to post this one because it was just so shockingly selfish and narcissistic. How dare a nation care about a national tragedy when it impinges on his personal day of celebration? How wonderful that a nation forget about the tragedy so he can enjoy his day again without a pall over it by the thousands who died? It’s important remember that people like Joseph exist.
The thing about September 11 that stands out for me is sitting in a restaurant the next day and hearing a little old lady say “I’d rather be safe than free”
That still sends chills up and down my spine
On 9/11, I worked for a large printing plant in Visalia (CA) as the production planner and scheduler. We also did work for a sister plant in Winnipeg. I was the liaison for our Canadian work. Pre-email days.
A few days later, I contacted my Winnipeg counterpart on the phone. He teared up on the phone. “We are all Yanks now.” Several Canadians I had never talked to came on the phone to offer condolences. They seemed eager to talk to anyone from the US.
We had a production meeting later that day. I relayed the conversation I had just had. Silence for several minutes. And then we staggered on.
I was a direct report to our plant manager, who was stranded in Chicago for 3 or 4 days. Somehow, he got back..
I was a day or a day and an a half late completing a large production forecast that no one was in any shape to work on and that the firm deadlines were 2 weeks away.
When I congratulated on his return, he barely said ‘Ugh” before ripping me an additional exit for being late. I watched 3000 people die on Monday. It was a setback.
He was a peach.
Cue Grateful Dead “Hell in a Bucket:. When he died, I literally ‘Danced on His Grave’.