Wow.....I didn't even realize that today was 9/11. I usually write my blog posts in advance and then they post automatically so I didn't realize I had sock yarn posted for 9/11. Not that there is anything wrong with sock yarn, mind you, but it certainly does not offer proper remembrance of a day that will live on in all of our memories for so long. Sock yarn will be back on Monday.
On 9/11 I was still in nursing school working on my master's degree. I was in class that morning when the news broke. Then, we fired up all of our big screens in the classrooms to watch the coverage. It was so heartbreaking. I'm sure there were more than half of us in the building crying. I remember going outside and looking across the street. I did my nursing education at Emory in Atlanta so I was looking across the street at the CDC thinking to myself that if terrorists are bombing strategic targets in the US then the CDC is probably not the place I want to be standing right next to. Before I could even go back in to collect my things they started evacuating the entire Emory campus. It took me over two hours to get home that day and I lived less than 5 minutes from the campus.
My first instinct that day, as a nurse, was to get in my car and immediately drive to NY to offer medical assistance. However, there was no need. Not enough people survived to need medical assistance and overwhelm the health care system too badly. My boss' brother worked in the Pentagon. We waited and waited for what seemed like forever for word of his safety. Unfortunately, he didn't survive the attack. My heart still goes out to all of those families who lost loved ones in that terrible, tragic day. I think about the people in the world who live with terrorism on a daily basis and realize how very fortunate we are in this country to not have to live with that type of environment (on that scale) day-to-day.
I remember the silence of the next few days. No air traffic in Atlanta at all was quite an eerie sound (or lack of sound rather). I was glued to the tv for 3 days. I simply could not digest what had just happened. I still have the Atlanta newspaper dated 9/12.
Despite all the political craziness that goes on here I still feel very, very fortunate to be a part of this country. Hopefully, we will never have to deal with that type of terrorist attack ever again.
We will remember.
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3 comments:
Thank you for posting about this. I was beginning to feel lonely out here.
While time has certainly put a buffer on the emotions I felt that day, it is still very very close to the surface for me.
I remember it well too. I was 7 months pregnant and it devastated me, knowing I'd be bringing my son into a world very different than the one I had grown up in. It does seem that as time passes, people aren't mentioning it as much. Like all griefs, it gets a bit faded with the passage of time. But we do not forget. How could we?
It is scary how the years have gone by since that date. We were in Hawaii and by the time our alarm clocks were ringing the second tower had just fallen. It was so sur-real that at first you thought the newsman was playing a spoof. But then the phones started ringing, uncle sam calling my hubby in where he would disappear for days with no word, my new boss as it was my second day where we worked on all the military bases merchandising, my girlfriend who worked in the call center at united airlines....sur-real. Thanks for posting as a rememberance and sharing.
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