Still Remembering?
- (Eight Years Later) - 9/11/01 to 9/11/09
Time is such an odd thing.
It rushes past us at a sometime breakneck
speed and we wonder where it all went so fast. Other times
as we wait for some special event or if relegated to a chair at the doctors
or dentists office it seems to drag at a pace slower than a turtle on crutches.
Yet if an event in our lifetime is significant
enough time no longer has any significance. With a wedding, the birth
of a child, the death of JFK, and the attacks of nine-eleven we recall
these memorable events in a continuum of time but yet without quantifying
the time that past. Of course if our goal is to determine the intervals
we break out our math hats and do the numbers and then marvel at the time
that passed.
That is much the way it is for me in
so far as the events that occurred 8 years ago are concerned. The
only reason I know it is eight years is because one of the TV announcers
mentioned it. Oh, don’t worry if I would have thought about it I
could have told you, but my memories of that day are so vivid that they
are just there.
We don’t even use the entire date to
conjure up the date, our primary reference is simply nine-eleven and the
memories come roaring back. Can you recall where you were and what
you were doing between 8:30 AM and Noon on September 11, 2001? Well
I do!
I was working as the Director of Sales
for a major hotel here and my offices were on a lower floor. It was nearly
9 AM and I was hurrying to get to a meeting in the conference room.
I had just exited the escalator to the main floor and noticed a number
of people standing around the TV of our lobby bar. They called me
over, and my jaw dropped with astonishment, and my gut tightened with the
terror of that moment.
We all stayed; riveted, both customers
and staff. The meeting was rescheduled and I do not recall if we
actually did any more work that day. I do not even recall if we stayed
until normal quitting time. For all I know, I could have left at
noon, or maybe I stayed until long after the supper hour; that part I do
not remember.
Smoke, fireballs, debris falling, people
jumping, pundits speculating, officials making innocuous statements, people
mumbling, buildings crashing down, media announcers droning on and on about
things they knew nothing about, and ash covered survivors running from
ground zero. Can you recall those scenes?
I made myself a promise that I would
never forget that infamous day; that promise became a guarantee, and the
guarantee evolved into a lifetime commitment of memories.
We must never forget nine-eleven-oh-one!
