In memory

I remember September 11, 2001 very clearly. My first semester at college, I had an 8:00 computer science class. It was totally uneventful, and I didn't hear anything until I got back to the dorm. I was meeting Andi and her then-boyfriend Russell downstairs because it was his birthday and we were going to Sbisa for a celebratory breakfast. All Andi said when I met them was an offhand "I heard some plane crashed into a skyscraper in New York," as in a little four seater or something...maybe the people on board were killed but nothing like the reality of the situation. It wasn't until we got back from breakfast and I turned on the TV that we knew. I still had to go to my computer lab and math class, but in between I just sat in front of the TV. They kept showing the towers fall over and over. And I remember talking to Mom, how everyone was calling their family, to make sure there wasn't some family member or friend on a plane or in New York that day...and how Matt's dad was there on business and the worry I felt until we heard he was okay. Last night on HBO they were showing an hour long special called "In Memoriam: New York City, 9/11/01," and whenever I flipped by it or lingered on it, it was all of these funerals: big ceremony-filled ones for firefighters, Muslim and Jewish ceremonies, small family affairs. It was one of those things I couldn't watch for long because it was too horrible.

It has only been three years, and yet this year seems so much more removed than September 11, 2003 or 2002. Maybe it's because it is an election year, or the war in Iraq, or ... I don't know. Maybe it is a good sign that there is ten times as much coverage on TV about college football right now than 9/11. But I am glad that I have not forgotten and will not forget.

I was just reading the e-mails I received on September 11 and the days past. Brittany's dad was stuck in Chicago...John Roberts was declared safe but stuck in a New Jersey airport...Emily was telling everyone Kelsey Grammer died in one of the planes...and then I came across one from English teacher Mark Pollex. He mentioned Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address...
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.