Day 23... remembering...

I remember the day.  Exactly where I was on the moment I found out.  The sun was streaming brightly into the window of my cubicle as it does now.  Different places, same feeling.  I remember watching the trickle of cars on the freeway below like rush hour on every other day of the year but somehow this felt different.  The sun in such conflict with my thoughts.  With the unknown, the fear.  I recall not being able to get information - the internet bogged down, local websites unable to cope.  I was gathering what I could from the BBC - it became the voice of all of this.  My first phone call was to my client - they were in the US, surely they would have heard by now - 8:30am (their local time - Chicago - sticks in my brain to this day) - the towers had just just been hit - but no.  I was the bearer of this unbelievable news - they were on the golf course, oblivious.  Perhaps it was better that way. 

There was no way to process this information in real time.  It just didn't seem real.  Still in some ways doesn't seem real.  The rest of that day is a blur - a constant streaming of the news, media from all over trying to make sense of this act, sense where there was none to be had.  Such meaningless tragedy - such massive casualty. 

I recall more clearly the days after this... the sky devoid of any planes, eerily quite.  We paddled that Wednesday - the sky above Toronto hushed - except for one rescue helicopter which drew all our attention - a momentary wondering of 'what now' which soon passed us by.  But still, wondering if there would be more.  Toronto, not so far from New York. 

I remember only a few weeks later - a trip to Chicago to see that client - airports only recently reopened.  The fear still looming large.  The changes, the searches, the searching.  I still feel my hesitation at flying that day - but knowing that I couldn't let that fear stop me - that we had to go on living otherwise they will have won, we would be defeated.  And we were too strong for that.

Ten years have passed since that fateful day.  Ten years.  And even though I was not directly touched by this tragedy I still recall every feeling - voicing those feelings now has brought it all back in this moment.  Sitting here, the sun shining in the window once again as I recall the dust and darkness that enveloped New York.  The courage and perseverance is what has won out though - I like to think that though scarred by tragedy - we have walked through the other side a little stronger, a little less afraid, a little less likely to take any day for granted for anything can happen.  Clearly, the unimaginable can happen.  The unimaginable did happen on September 11, 2001.