Today, we remember the people whose lives were changed forever by the events of the day we refer to as 9/11. And those whose lives ended too soon. And we send a wish for peace and healing, of hearts, of minds, of our world.
If you would like to share your memories of where you were on September 11 — no matter how near or far — or your thoughts and feelings about what happened or the legacy, as yet another anniversary comes round, we welcome your stories. Please feel free to comment below.
On September 11, 2001, I was ironing a dress and getting my little girl ready for her first day of grade two.
Ironing.
Such a mundane thing to be doing as lives were changed forever. Such a terribly ordinary chore as lives ended.
My husband came into the bedroom and numbly we watched the television together as the events escalated and the buildings collapsed.
Like so many others, I thought the first plane to hit one of the World Trade Towers was a terrible accident. When the second plane hit I thought a foreign nation was attacking the United States. And when the plane that hit the Pentagon? It had to be war. But by who?
I was thousands of miles away, in another country, on another coast. I felt, if not safe, then buffered by the cities, plains and mountains between Vancouver Island and New York, until they closed Canada’s airspace. The iron steamed, the TV announced second-by-second updates and I wondered if I should keep my daughter home from school. All that day, I talked on the phone to those I loved as if to reassure myself that our cocoon remained unruptured. And it may have been, but it wasn’t untouched. Nothing was untouched after that day.
I went through that day and the day after and the day after that listening clinically to the radio for news. It became an obsession. My friends later confessed they did the same. Around me people wept for the survivors and they wept for the dead. I couldn’t cry and began to wonder what was wrong with me.
Until September 14.
On the eve of that day, I sat in my car at an intersection smoking a cigarette, as I did back then. A heavy rain pounded the windshield as I listened to a security guard on the radio tell the story of hundreds of people leaving one of the towers as though it were an ordinary fire drill — and then the creeping awareness amongst them that not all of them, if any, would make it out.
Maybe it was his voice, or maybe it was like a damn of emotion overflowing at last inside of me. I cried at the sound of sorrow in that sweet man’s voice. I sat there until a car finally honked behind me. Then I turned on my windshield wipers and headlights and drove home through the wet dusk. And there it was with the lamps warm and orange through the windows and the sound of my daughter’s footsteps running to greet me as I hurried to the door.
Just last week I sat beside someone who had watched from his New York apartment window as the buildings fell and smoke surged upwards like massive gray dragons. He told me the story of his September 11 and the weeks and then the months and then the years of not being able to forget.
Photo Credits
“Ground Zero Towers of Light” Photographer Unknown
Flowers float in a reflecting pool at Ground Zero, placed there by families of victims during a 9/11 memorial ceremony on September 11, 2009 in New York. (Chang W. Lee/Getty Images)
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My name is Chelsea Chris, and I am a new recording artist who really appreciates and admires everything those amazing men and women did for us that terrible day. I’d like to share a couple of songs I recorded as a tribute to these amazing heroes. Please listen, share, and never forget <3
"You Were Running In"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLuNzV1bS8Q&feature=related
"Because of the Brave"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3dYu72_7Pk
“My Hero”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY78Az6Y0Jg
I was getting ready to go to work. The phone rang and Colleen’s brother on the west coast told her what was happening. She called me and we tuned in CNN.
There is no single word that can describe how I felt as I watched the horror unfold. Incredulous, astonished, deeply saddened and raging with anger. Is there a word that encompasses all of that? I knew in my spirit that this was, in a sense, the end of innocence and that our world would be forever changed.
The years that have followed the tragedy of 911 have proven that to be true. So many things have happened, so many new laws, so many new restrictions, so many encumbrances on our freedoms and still, the threat remains. I suppose it was always there, just never this close to home. Then there are all of the conspiracy theories that have come along. Many remain. Some of those theories really make you wonder.
When its all said and done though, the question I ask is, what did we learn? Are we paying attention? Are we waking up to the fact that we all need to begin to respect and embrace one another and finally put our differences aside? We’ve been working on that one for thousands of years. Are we getting closer to getting wiser? I sure hope so or the events of that day will simply look like a spark against whatever else may come. I am forever hopeful! And for the souls lost that day and the many they left behind, I am forever sorry …
horrible. that is the only word i can muster.
I was in my photography class in college. I had made new friends. we were let out early becuase of the news. I only saw it on the t.v. I watched as so many other USD students, facultiy and staff watched along side us. most were crying.
I don’t like thinking of this day. It’s too sad, and I have not proccessed the grief. I did not lose anyone personally. I, as a human, lost brothers sisters, mothers, fathers. As did we all.
Such horrific tragedy. heartbreaking, stomach churning tragedy.
on this day, I look into my gorgeous daughters eyes and know that I will have to explain this horrific part of history too, along with so many other horror stories of american history, huge swaths of america that have been ripped jagged and harsh into the material of humanity. Some try to “pretty it up” or make some kind of distraction, but the scars will always remain, and be visible, if you know where to look.
so horrifically sad.
I was in 3rd grade. I lived in a community right outside of new york city where nearly 100% of families had at least one parent who worked in the city. Every grade in my school had at least 2 families who lost someone in the attacks, some many more. My dad worked in the first tower. The moment the plane hit, he was supposed to be there.
But he decided to skip work and surprise my mom for her birthday.
We were pulled out of school immediately. No one would tell us what was happening. My mom picked us up, crying hysterically. But when we got home, there was my dad sitting on the couch, watching the towers fall on TV.
Till this day, 9 years later, my mother refuses to celebrate her birthday because of the horrorible events on that day.
But every 9/11, we give thanks that that day is, indeed, her birthday.
I was in bed – in Nanaimo – I awoke to the sound of the TV. My in laws were visiting from Toronto and we’d planned on going to Tofino that morning for a day trip.
We went to Tofino and had the radio tuned in for updates. There were still planes in the sky at that time – you could see them high up in the sky and I felt surreal dread hoping that they would not come tubling out of the sky before my very eyes.
I always wondered and thought that perhaps they were flying toward doom too…
What can you say beyond that?
– Don Power
Nanaimo
That summer I’d had a dream that an airliner had appeared in the sky over downtown Victoria. It veered around and crashed into the clock on top of City Hall. I woke with a feeling of doom that followed me around for the rest of the day.
Sept. 11 2001 was my daughter’s 2nd day of kindergarten. Just before the kids and I headed off to school, my husband called from work to tell me that he’d heard some idiot had just flown his plane into a building in New York. We figured it was some kind of prank, a stunt gone wrong, a spiderman climbing the walls kind of guy whose antics had backfired. I headed off to the school.
We were standing in the cloakroom when one of the mothers asked me if I’d heard.
“It’s World War III,” she told me under her breath (She’d been notified that morning that her husband was stranded in Seattle, as all flights were off). I still didn’t quite understand it until I got home and turned on the tv. My husband phoned again. By that point another plane had hit. I wasn’t sure how the imagery would affect our three year old, so I kept a careful eye on the news throughout the day, turning on and off the tv as necessary. Days and days of CNN went by. On/Off. On/Off. Eventually a school newsletter was sent home with our daughter advising parents how to help children deal with catastrophic events.
But I ask, how can you explain away something, when you can’t even understand it yourself?
Margaret
Thanks Margaret and Don, I have since spoken to many people who seemed to have some kind of psychic forewarning of the 9-11 catastrophe.