Where were you?

Where were you when the world stopped turning...

As Alan Jackson asked so eloquently in those long, dark days of that September 11th, nine years ago?

I was in bed.

It seems strange, looking back on it, but I was. I'd worked a midnight shift and at 0847, I was peacefully asleep. I was still asleep at 0903 and at 1003. I slept through the Pentagon and Shanksville...

At around 1100, my sister, who was watching our mother so I could sleep, came up to wake me. Her words are still as clear to me today as they were on that day:

"Planes have hit the World Trade Center and the towers are gone."

My first half-asleep thought was "What towers? Not OUR towers."

I could not comprehend the possibility. Not those towers, not this country. It simply wasn't possible.

Then I turned on my TV and saw the truth.

Alan Jackson had it absolutely right. My world stopped turning on that day for a variety of reasons.

Once I'd gotten dressed and gone downstairs, my main thought was of my nephew. He lives in NYC, at that time, within blocks of the World Trade Center. I had no idea if he was safe. I had no idea who I could call to find out. My brother? No, I knew he'd be trying to get in touch with his son.

My aunt and uncle were to return from England that day. An hour and a half out of Heathrow, the captain of their flight announced that the air space over the United States had been closed and they were returning to England. They had no idea what had happened. I had no idea what had happened to them.

Finally, I got a call from my sister-in-law's sister who told me my nephew was fine.

My thoughts then turned more completely to the fact that we had been attacked. My country, my homeland had been attacked.

All we coud do, as a family, as a nation, was sit and watch. It seemed utterly unbearable but how could you turn it off? That day and the following harrowing days, how could you turn it off?

Then, it got personal again. I found out that the nephew of a good friend had been in one of the towers. He was gone. Days after he'd found out that his wife of a year was pregnant, he was gone. They would find nohting in the days to come, nothing to offer closure to his bride. Nothing at all, not even a ring.

The husband of another good friend found himself flying Combat Air Patrol over the Capital.

Think about that for a moment; he was flying combat missions in the skies over this country.

She, as a member of a national emergency response team, was assigned to the Pentagon. She later would be hospitalized with an infected puncture wound in her chest that she would tell you she got 'crawling around the rubble of the Pentagon', as though it was no big deal. What she couldn't tell you about was the stories of the young soldiers who wanted to help, of the families that would press photographs into her hands, begging for information about their loved ones. She took them and said they'd do their best. She didn't know how to tell them there was simply nothing left...

September 11th is just as raw for me today as it was nine years ago.

It is the day the towers fell.

It is the day the Pentagon was damaged.

It is the day a plane went down in a field in Pennsylvania...

It is the day the world truly stopped turning.

There will be no other posts from me today.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF THE 2,977 PEOPLE THAT DIED THAT DAY...

YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN