I have brought this post back from last year. Watching the memorial services on TV this morning, it has brought it back so vividly, again.
I remember it so clearly: it comes back to me every time that fateful day is mentioned. I have to put it into words now.
Bob and I were having breakfast. We had the TV on as usual – but not really paying attention to the show, whatever it was. The phone rang. It was unusual for the phone to ring before 9 am. It was my daughter, calling from work.
She asked if we had the TV on. She sounded upset. She told us to turn to the news channel – we usually watched CNN. “A plane crashed into one of the Twin Towers!”
As we watched, the camera picked up another visual: Another plane was headed to the other Twin Tower! Bob and I gasped in disbelief. We were watching what millions of people were probably watching at the same time. The newscasters were beyond words. They were shouting and scrambling for words. This couldn’t be happening!
But it was.
Then the news reported there was a plane that crashed right into the Pentagon, and then another plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. It seemed as if the world – our world – was being turned upside down.
And those scenes were played over and over and over. I couldn’t watch. Every time there was a replay, I turned it off. It was too upsetting.
Some time later, I found out that a cousin of mine had a meeting scheduled in one of the Towers, but, at the last minute, it was moved to another venue. Speaking of timing! She was supposed to be there, but then again, she wasn’t supposed to be there. It was not her time.
And, one of my neighbors, here in Florida, lost a son. He was one of those courageous firefighters who, unlike most of us who would run from a fire, ran towards it with the one goal in mind: to save people.
It was another “date which will live in infamy.”
Sunshinebright 