Remembering, wondering, grieving September 11

[dhoff]

I have been sad today feeling a lot, waves of sadness coming up seemingly out of the blue today and yesterday, reminding me of that day. I was in the city that day, but uptown. About 15 of my good friends and relatives working in the towers or within a 2 block radius. We tracked most of them down and almost all of our family members within the first 3 hours, kept getting good news, but still some people were missing. 1 hour after the towers came down, my neighbors dad showed up in my building, covered in dust, had run from the falling buildings and had no place to go. He stayed with me until they opened the GW bridge. An hour later I heard that My friend, a mother of 3 had called in sick that day and wasn't in the office that the first plane plowed into, for that reason. At that time they opened the GW bridge but wouldnt let me ride my bike over. I was stopped by a cop and when I said, "what if I ride over anyway" he said, "I will shoot you", and I believed him. So I hitched a ride with my bike in a van full of people who only spoke spanish.

4 hours after the towers came down we heard from a friends wife, she had told the security the second tower, telling her to return to her desk and not to leave the building to F-Off and convinced her entire office to leave with her, thereby saving the lives of 74 people, (every single member) at her investment banking form, 6 hours after the towers came down I got a call, saying someone close had just made it home, a 5 hour walk with no shoes, to Brooklyn. An hour later, I was watching TV, the scenes from the Helicopters that they only showed for a little while. I watched as a friend, not close, but someone I knew, broke out a window; the floor beneath in flames. He looked up to the people in the Helicopter as if asking for help, I felt like he was looking strait into me through the TV. I could see his fear, still can. I can still feel it almost like it was me, the heat from below, intense, the hopelessness, he leaned way out the window, looked down for a moment, and then up one more time, looking strait into the eyes of the camera, he let go, falling from high up in the tower.

I prayed that day for him and for all of us, for those who would yet die as a result of this, the soldiers and the innocents. I expect that there have been more of the latter.

Today, 10 years later I grieve for all of those who have so senselessly lost, not just those who have died but for those who have lost the ones they love. I wonder if anything we have done since has made anyone safer. I have always felt that there is glory in giving everything to a cause, in feeling so driven by one's convictions, one is willing to give up their life. But there is no glory in loosing a father or a son or a daughter. There is only loss. It seems we have all lost so much since that day, people we loved, freedoms we held dear.

Today was a sad day for me. A day I needed to remember from where we came.

[Jonathan]

Well said.