Do you remember where you were when the towers fell?

I was on my way to my business law class. I had been in an earlier class and as I walked through the building I heard rumblings of something going on in New York. A plane, or maybe a helicopter, had flown into a building. It didn’t sound like anything more than a freak accident so I went into class and kind of forgot about it as I dozed off to my professors monotone voice.

I left campus after business law to get lunch. It was only then I started to hear what really happened and the word terrorists. It was hard to believe. I got through the rest of my day and headed home to get ready for work. I was glued to the news at home. 

At the time, I worked at a grocery store and we had tv monitors throughout for parent’s to check in on their kids in the Tot Spot. On Sundays, it was changed to the Packer games and on September 11, 2001, it was turned to the news. That night we didn’t get much work done. No customers were in the store and we huddled around the TVs to try and make sense of what had happened earlier in the day.

I don’t think I will ever forget that day.

On our first trip to NYC, we went to the 9/11 Memorial and it was indescribable. The closest other experiences I have had were at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. There is a sense of loss in these places but it’s important to remember these tragedies and honor those who died. 

I couldn’t speak as we went through the memorial. At one point, I had to walk away from a display. It was the recordings from the flight that crashed in Pensylvania. I had tears in my eyes and was on the verge of losing it. Listening was so much harder than reading and seeing. The memorial was touching, moving, and emotional. It was hard but worth it.

If you have the opportunity to go yourself, I highly encourage you to do so. Be sure to leave enough time to fully explore and feel. It took us a few hours to go through as we looked at and read about everything. Also, be prepared to feel and have a heaviness when you leave. It takes a while for these things to leave me. In reality, those feelings never go away but they are quite heavy for the next few hours after.