Remembering

I was at school when the towers fell on 9/11. As students arrived in homeroom, they crowded around the only television. Back then, there was still cable in the classrooms and we watched CNN — a news anchor was going over the first plane crashing into one of the towers. As we watched, it happened again. Second plane, second tower.

Fear gnawed at my insides. Even then, largely unaware of the conflict already in place in the Middle East nor world-savvy enough to know what would follow, I knew that nothing would ever be exactly the same. I imagined that people would grieve and mourn, but nothing could prepare me for Homeland Security, nor the Patriot Act, nor several bloody wars. It’s not the sort of thing one can prepare for, I suppose.

I know that the tragedy that day touched me only peripherally. I didn’t know anyone in any of the towers, nor on any of the planes. Neither did my close friends. We saw loss at a distance, felt in only vaguely, and had no real grasp of what it all meant.

That day, we thought it was some kind of a horrible accident — faulty planes, poor navigation, who knows. The realization that living, thinking human beings had flown those planes into buildings because of their own personal beliefs about the US, that didn’t come until later.

I think most of us will forever remember that day. It’s etched into our brains and we don’t always easily forget tragedy. But I also think that the past has come and gone. What happened that day can never be undone. No matter how many terrorists exist or don’t exist, no matter how many live or die, the reality remains: people died that day and they’re never coming back. That’s the truth we have to live with.

Should we mourn them every year? I don’t know. You tell me.