Most Certainly Not: Snapshots

As a person who enjoys scrapbooking and saving memories, I find that I think in snapshots. An event happens, like a birthday party or a family celebration, and I can pull up stills of certain moments, complete with audio in my mind.

When I think about September 11, 2001, the process is much the same. I do, however, experience chills still when I look at images on TV as it unfolded. My hair literally stands on my head. What continues to get me the most is the tone of people's voices...the disbelief...the shock...the horror...the total confusion at what is occurring as it's occurring. Where now, some can muster a matter-of-fact or resolute tone when you discuss this moment in our nation's history, then even the most expert orator among us could not.

This morning, seeing a clip from street level of the second plane hitting the second tower and hearing a firefighter's repeated exclamation of, "Holy shit!" only to hear him say, "Come on, guys! Let's go!" and remembering that where others fled the scene, hundreds gathered their gear and rushed to the scene. It was one thing to watch fellow Americans at a distant in distress.

It was a total other to sit on pins and needles until I knew my family members who worked in Manhattan were okay. My father-in-law. My brother-in-law. Other relatives too.

I was touched beyond belief at the story of my husband's uncle--a powerful, well-known, well-respected business man--who covered in soot and ashes, stumbled through the streets and was taken home to Jersey by a cellular phone employee in the company van. Unrecognizable, he fell into his home and his wife's arms. I think it's safe to say, he was not the same after that. Knowing his grandson was in that city attending his elementary school, not able to learn on his trek home that his grandson's parents had run through the streets to gather their son up and spirit him away to safety.

I cried and still cry when I think of my young brother-in-law exchanging e-mail with his childhood friend/college roommate who worked in the WTC on that crystal blue morning. The e-mail going back and forth prior to the official start of their work day and then...the replies stopped. My brother-in-law's innocent and reasonable thought that his friend had been pulled into a meeting...and the sickening realization that it was something else. Something worse. Something too horrible to even comprehend at the time. Hoping he'd fled. Realizing he couldn't.

The jumble of images and emtions are almost too much to bear.

Today lots of people will remember...it's important too that people never forget.