Remembering 9/11

Every year as this day approaches, I have a sense of sadness that comes over me. I still cannot bear to watch or listen to the replays of that fateful day. The memory of it is burned forever in my mind. I watched it unfold before my very eyes. With the thoughts of 'I was supposed to be at the Towers with the girls' racing through my mind.

Yes I was supposed to be down there that day. It was the last thing I had planned to do before I flew back to Atlanta with my Grandma and the girls. I figured I didn't know when I'd be back to New York since Grandma was moving to Georgia to live with me, so I would live the best trip for last. A walk around the Twin Towers, Trinity Church, and South Street Seaport.

But the Fates had other plans for me. The night before, my oldest suffered a severe nose bleed, one I thought would surely send us to the ER. Never had she had one so bad, nor has she had one like that ever since. It kept us up most of the night even though it had finally stopped after a half hour. But just the fear of it starting up again kept waking her up, which of course woke the rest of us up.

Morning dawn, sunny and beautiful. Grandma was getting ready to go to the beauty salon to have her hair done one last time by her beauticianist. She turned on the radio just a minute or two after 8:46 am...listening to the caster talk about what had just happened, I kept thing something sounds very, very wrong. We turned on the TV and the shock of what we saw was just unreal. And then the second plane comes into view flying straight for the 2nd Tower. I remember waving my hands at the TV as if to try and shew it away, telling it to move. The horror of watching that plane strike before my eyes, was like watching a bad movie.

Then watching the Towers fall one by one. The knowing that I was supposed to be there that day with my two girls. Memories that are forever etched in my mind. I could have walked to the corner of the block, and seen it 'live', but watching it on the TV was bad enough. The memory of the silence that washed over the city and my neighborhood was almost unbearable.

Where I was at my Grandma's apartment, was about 3 miles from Ground Zero. We could see the debris cloud hanging in the air, seemingly inching closer and closer. The silence of not hearing the airplanes flying into or taking off from LaGuardia was strange, and the sound of fighter jets and watching them fly over us and head towards Ground Zero as they patrolled the air space was something I never in my life thought I'd see.

I've often wondered since that day, why did she have that nose bleed? Why were we kept from going down there? What purpose do we each have that we were prevented from being there that day? I don't know if I'll ever get the answers to those questions. But I am grateful that we are still here.

I will Never Forget that fateful day.