Sunday, September 11, 2016

9-11-2016

    Its 9/11 again.  Its been fifteen years since 9/11/2001 and it still brings tears to my eyes as I watch them reading the never ending list of names of those who lost their lives at  what was the site of the World Trade Center. Its uncanny to see some of the children of those who died on 9/11 who never met their fathers. They are already 14 or 15 years old. Has that much time passed? Is the world any better since then?
      I still remember 9/11/2001 as one of the most frightening days in my life. I was not at the WTC when it happened but I was in Manhattan at the time. I was at work further uptown. When I left work that day I could see the smoke of the attack . It was that thick. For days there was the drone of helicopters protecting New Yorkers . The week after was Rosh Hashanah. It was so strange to celebrate the Jewish Holidays so close to such devastation.
      When I woke up on 9/12/2001 I remember thinking "Now What?" The world was just never going to be the same. America was never going to be the same. They had tried to blow up the WTC  eight years before but they had not succeeded. I hadn't forgotten about that. Apparently neither had the nefarious terrorists. I remember walking through the shops at the WTC  the summer of 2001  and thinking about the failed attempt on the trade center. It felt eerie. I had no idea what was yet to come a few months later.
        It rained heavily in NYC on 9/10/2001. I was on the subway going home that day and one of the poles people hold onto on the  train fell off and someone picked it off the floor and took it home. I had never seen one of those  break.
         9/11/2001 was a beautiful sunny day. It was also very hot. I had plans to do the errands I could not have done on the rainy 9/10/2001. I also had a date planned for that day. Needless to say my plans for that day changed . I left  work early that day but no one could leave the city at first because they had stopped all of the trains until later in case any of the accomplices were trying to escape. In the end I stayed with friends who lived in Manhattan. I did not go home until 9/12/2001.
        I know two people who had brothers who died at the WTC. I found out about the passing of one of them when I saw a note on the "wailing wall" at Grand Central station giving my friend as the person to contact because his brother was one of the missing people. I know a few people who escaped the WTC as it was going down.
         You could not forget that day . For weeks I would see the smoke of the burning WTC as I was on the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan every morning. 9/11 was all anyone could talk about for weeks afterward. Everyone was in mourning. The world as we knew it had changed forever.
The Freedom Tower  in lower Manhattan 2016
      In memory of those who lost their lives so tragically on 9/11/2001. The world is not the same without them. 

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