9/11
I am not sure how many other people are blogging about this, I am sure it numbers up there for subjects today. I am sitting and left just amazed that it has been seven years since the event. I recall the morning it happened. I was still in Virginia at the VaTech – which I still think should be called VPI personally. First heard of things happening as I was getting my coffee that morning and doing my usual checks of the news. It was numbness that we all tried to keep with things that were happening that morning, especially as the demands on the internet were pushed the limits. The deadlines we had for upcoming projects were suddenly forgotten and seemed trivial at best.
As things came to light that day and in the coming months we learned of the tragic loss, the horrors of such things. There just is not any other way to state that and any statement of such is such an understatement. There have been a lot of memorial events and art works to help us remember those that lost their lives, the heroes, some of which also lost their lives, and even those that survived and were left behind. A lot of those were speeches and the like made today and other days in the past.
However, I do not think that any heard today have touched me like the one I heard last week. It was from Frankie Davis. (*) Frankie did an interview with I believe it was his mother, for Story Corps, a regular feature on NPR that records stories of mostly just the everyday live of people. The recorded stories and are being archived, I believe in the Library of Congress for future generations to use and see who we were and from where the originate.
The interview was with a ten or eleven year old Frankie, who apparently lost his father in one of the towers on that day. They asked to remember back to when things happened seven years ago. He was talking about at first he thought it was cool, because he had gotten to go to his granddad’s house. He apparently really likes he grand-dad. While there, Frankie was being even happier at first, because some of his cousins were they were playing and he was having a good time. At this point, they asked him when he knew. He replied that he asked about his father and someone responded that he may not see his father again. As he recounted this, Frankie broke and began to cry.
It was at that moment that I truly felt so touched and emotionally in tune with this young gentleman. He is now hitting a seven-year mark of not having a father. Just overwhelming really – very emotional and very much something tugging at my own chest as I listened to the rest of the brief recording.
So as to not leave this completely on a down note here is something to think about it. The world, while it may have for some few, did not stop turning on that fateful day. I really did not think about it when a good friend of mine was talking of birthday dinners for her six-year-old. After a moments thought after the fact, it occurred to me that this young girl was born on 9/11 exactly one year after the incident. A wonderful sign of the fact that despite it, we will go on. Further, it made me think about all the little ones that had birthdays and turned seven on 9/11 – another thought that makes me realize the wonders of life.
* – I note to myself, that I really need to make more detailed notes of these things that strike me if I am going to be more than an hour or two before I get back to them. Of course notes in the car may be just as appreciated as my getting the computer out by other drivers.
My apologies for also being so tardy in finishing this, it should have been done yesterday on 9/11, instead of today 9/12.
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Heather
