September 11th, Nine Years Later

Hard to believe it has been nine years since the World Trade Center towers were hit with airplanes in the hands of terrorists. It was an awful event--"awful" in the true sense of the word: a day filled with awe and horror. I have written some blurbs about it in my memoirs for my grandchildren, along with other historic days that I have lived through, including the assassination of President Kennedy. But the truth is that there are no words that can describe that day or the days that followed. You had to be there. I wasn't. I was, like most of the rest of the country, just a spectator to a horrible event. We could share in the devastation only as sympathetic voyeurs riveted to watching an event that doesn't even compute in the human brain. What words can depict the total shock and devastation on the faces of all of those firemen who were awaiting orders, knowing that there was nothing they could do to save anyone or change a thing that was happening? The sounds of the bodies hitting the ground, after having jumped from the heights of the burning buildings? The terror of not knowing how to get out? The total hopelessness of trying to help when help was impossible? The not knowing if your loved one had survived? The moments of realization that loved ones were doomed when talking to them on cell phones, etc.?

Today, Dr. Phil (see previous post) had a guest on his TV show--a first-responder to the 9/11 tragedy who was untrained in what he would endure after 9/12. His family was at wit's end because the man has not been able to get over his experiences, and they said it would have been "easier" on them if he had died. Wow! Dr. Phil read some excerpts from the man's journal--a book that his family didn't even know existed--where he mentioned stepping on body parts, having to wait for officials to come to retrieve a skull or a hand or a torso that he had encountered. The wife and daughter didn't know about the book. I think they were aghast to hear some of it. It was the man's fault for not sharing his experiences with them...not letting them into his nightmares...but typical of things that happened to my father's generation in World War II. To protect your loved ones, you didn't share those experiences.

When I was still teaching, the play The Diary of Anne Frank was in our text.
I did my homework. In an effort to help my students understand the times, I researched individual Holocaust experiences. (I went to school with many Jewish students in the Chicago area way back when. My students didn't know a single Jewish person.) To make a long story short, I realized that there is/was a whole generation of suvivors who were hugely damaged by the things they had seen and endured--things that no human being should have to see or endure. Some wanted never to speak of it again in order to find peace. Others wanted to voice what they had experienced so no one would forget. I suspect it is the same with 9/11 survivors and witnesses.

In any case, I honor those who have been through so much more than I can even imagine. God bless them all! Makes my problems seem quite petty!

And also...GOD BLESS AMERICA!