Honoring September 11th: Remember

I remember the moment when I turned on the television that morning eight years ago and saw smoke coming out of a hole in one of the World Trade Center Towers. I had worked briefly in that building, during my short time living in New York. I sat in horror, wondering what horrible accident had occurred, what misfortunate pilot had wandered off-course and made such a fatal error. What a tragedy, I thought. What a horrible accident. What a shame.

And then, while I sat there in my comfortable American home watching my big screen television on my recently purchased couch with my coffee in hand, in real time, I saw a second plane hit the other tower.

At that moment, I knew: This is an attack. And everything changed for me, utterly and completely.

The war that had been going on without our acknowledgement, a war waged by crazed extremists from countries I had never thought about, came crashing into our homes, killing our citizens, destroying one of our country’s landmarks, and re-orienting, in various ways, all of our lives.

I lost no one close to me on that horrible day. A close friend who was a paramedic in New York gave me a very harrowing account of her experiences, but she survived. But I still felt such grief, such a horrible sense of loss, at the fact that thousands of my fellow Americans had lost their lives that day just by going to work.

I remember talking to a Canadian friend who called me out of the blue from Montreal to share his feelings, and to tell me how he felt like an American that day, that his sense of loss and grief was overpowering, and he shared that with me, and offered his love. Over the next few days, I called my closest friends and my family members, purportedly to talk about the events of 9/11, but actually just to tell them I loved them and cherished them. And all of us shared a sense of resolve: we must, as a nation, confront these people, and make sure that it never happens again.

But that resolve is simply not shared by our current administration. We are being governed by a President who will not make a speech about the meaning of 9/11. Instead he will try to rebrand 9/11 into a National Day of Service which will have nothing to do with the attack on our country. He might make a speech about how Americans are lying about his health-care plan, and how Americans are behaving badly in town hall meetings, and implying that Americans are liars and racists if they disagree with him. But he will not mention the terrorist attack that occurred eight years ago, and he will not vow that it will never happen again.

Let us all remember what we felt on that day, even though our government and our media chooses to forget it. Our survival as a nation depends on it.