I first posted this two years ago, on the 5th anniversary of 9/11. It still says exactly what I feel, and think, about that horrible, world-changing day. The only thing I’ve changed, for this post, is the image.
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Five years ago, with the images of the planes hitting the twin towers looping on all available media, I was overcome with a need to touch AC. I had to see and hold that five-year-old innocent whose world, and future, had abruptly changed.
She didn’t understand why Mommy sat on the floor in the daycare hall, holding her and crying… and she doesn’t remember it today. Five years is ancient history when you’re ten, but inside, Mommy still cries.
For three days, I’ve tried to articulate my feelings about that day. I’ve drafted, revised, and deleted endlessly… but I just can’t write about it.
Days of retrospection have produced nothing but emotional, incoherent babble — inadequate, futile attempts to articulate feelings more painful than I was prepared to handle.
Because to confront September 11 in my heart, I also have to remember September 10; I don’t know which hurts more.
I won’t spend today watching those planes fly, again and again, into the WTC. I remember it clearly. I don’t need to see people falling, or jumping; the images are seared into my mind.
Today, I’ll grieve for those who died that day, and since, and I’ll also mourn the ailing soul of our country, the slowly fading memories of the America that was, and for the radically altered future of the children — all of them.
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