9/11: I Will Never Forget
I made a decision to go to New York this past weekend to be with some of the 9/11 families. As I was flying home I thought about my experience. Those I met and talked with deeply touched me, so I decided to write about it. I am not going to reveal the names because 9/11 is very personal to them.
After I informed people I was going, the question that I heard from my friends and family members was why are you going? The answer was very simple for me. After doing numerous interviews I connected with the families, I wanted to go to show them that in just a small way, we have not forgotten what happened. I told the family members how I felt: that even remotely I could never fully understand what they went through and are still going through today. Yet, as an American, I experienced something that day that changed my life as well.
One family in particular adopted me this 9/11. They allowed me to be a part of what they must endure every year. This 9/11 was more even more dreary and somber due to the inclement weather of down-pouring rain and wind. I heard one 9/11 family member comment that “it is not rain, but tears.”
After approaching the 9/11 memorial site in Battery Park, close to where the World Trade Center once stood, I observed family members. They had pins, t-shirts, and posters of their lost loved ones. The memorial started with bagpipes followed by the National Anthem and then more bagpipes. Mayor Bloomberg gave a disappointing short speech where he talked more about this day being a national day of service than about what the families were and are experiencing. This was followed by a reading of the names, in alphabetical order, of those that perished eight years ago. At the appropriate time, one bell was rung for when the planes struck the WTC and three bells were rung for when the towers fell. Each time it was followed by a moment of silence.
I observed and briefly spoke to those around me. One man wore on the back of his jacket: “I didn’t forget. I don’t forgive.” Other family members looked as if they were in a daze, standing there still and silent. There was a man who was by himself sobbing uncontrollably. I went up to him and offered a tissue and asked if he was all right. He started to talk to me, telling me how he was a forensics engineer, working at the WTC . He told me that he could not bring his family with him because he did not want them to see him this way. At the end of our conversation, he noted that he changed professions and his life was changed forever by what he experienced.
At the end of the name reading, I was taken to the family center, where only families and friends are allowed to leave pictures and mementos of their lost loved ones. As I entered, I immediately reflected back to the days shortly after 9/11 when I saw on TV the gates around the hole of the WTC flooded with pictures and mementos. I cannot put into words the eerie feeling I had as I walked around the room to view what was left.
I was taken next to the World Trade Center visitor center which was created by the father of a fireman who died there. It starts off with a video of what happened and has pieces of the WTC as well as personal belongings of those who died. As you travel through it, there is another wall of pictures of the victims, a remembrance wall with names of all those that died in New York on that somber day, and comments by children on how they felt about that day. One child wrote “What the terrorists wanted is for us to be scared, to go in our house and never come out. But we didn’t do that.”
The day ended with a dinner hosted by a family member for a few who participated in the clean-up and rescue as well as government officials that worked with the families. Those of us that had not directly lost loved ones observed how family members came to each other and hugged. I saw this as a pilgrimage that has to be made every year because of the connection to each other and the now holy site of where their loved ones were buried. One of the government officials started to cry and I knew that is was not just me but many others that would never forget those family members and the victims, the true heroes of 9/11.
