A Day of Remembrance

I remember everything about this day, September 11th, 2001. I'm just a simple New Yorker who was working as usual in my Rockefeller Center building. I remember the fear, the helplessness. I remember watching it unfold on live TV on the 28th floor of an office building and I felt terrified. I remember that I so desperately just wanted to get home. I wondered who I knew that may have worked in those buildings. The phone literally rang off the hook. I'm grateful that I didn't lose anyone in my family, although I knew a wonderful co-worker I worked with some years prior who was a wonderful man.

But I still grieved. Not only for him, but for all those who have died, for the buildings that fell, the planes that crashed, the families who lost so much. Going to my former co-worker's church service had to be part my grieving process even though I really didn't know him that well. We had to do something, feel a part of somewhere, feel the strength of others and grieve together.

I've grieved so much in my life prior to this event that I knew I had to go through it. They say there are 5 stages of grief and I knew I had to feel them all: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We were all walking around during this time, some grieving more than others but we were all grieving on some level. Some were even grieving the fact that they survived, and feeling the guilt.

My little blog can't even make a dent into the feelings and emotions that ran through on that day, and on the world after it. But in some way, it helps me to express my own feelings and just remember my own account of where I was, who I was with, how I dealt with it.

So today I will watch the news reports. I will hear the stories once again of some of the people who were lost, of the heroes, of their children and families. It's necessary to feel it, to remember it. Last night I watched the documentary of the brothers who were filming a rookie fire fighter on that day and remembered, reflected, and cried.