Everyone remembers where they were when they first heard that planes had struck the Twin Towers in New York. It is a moment frozen in time for most of us, a horror that swept us outside the movement of ticking hands and into another plain.
Like most Americans who were old enough to comprehend what was happening, I remember Sept. 11, 2001 in vivid detail. I remember hearing strange, indistinct rumors at the lunch table about some kind of bomb or explosion that had just happened in New York, but no one seemed to know for sure what was going on. I remember feeling uneasy when my normally cheerful, sixth grade study hall teacher, Mrs. Shepherd, asked us all to put away our homework because there was something we needed to see on television. I remember how she explained that something terrible had happened today, something that the teachers had been instructed to keep from us during school hours, but something that she thought we needed to know.
In the dark of our basement classroom we watched in silence as Dan Rather reported live on multiple plane crashes. By that time, all four planes had crashed, and there was no doubt about this being any kind of accident. I became numb as I watched; hardly a tear fell in the entire room because the shock was still so great. We saw the images, we heard the facts reported, but our brains couldn't comprehend that it was real yet.
I wasn't able to move from disbelief into sadness until I went home that day. In my 11-year-old mind, even after seeing all the facts, I couldn't believe it was true until my family said it was. But there was no more denying it once I had seen my parents' faces and my older sister's tear-stained cheeks - my sister who had gone to the top of a Twin Tower on a field trip almost exactly a year ago to the day. This is what drove it home for me, the realization of how many people weren't lucky enough to be sitting next to their sister to get through this time; how many sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends would never return home again.
I prayed then that those who died might be at peace and that we might never forget their unknowing sacrifice. Ten years later I am certain we have not forgotten; we carry on their memory with pride. The services we hold each year and the memorials we have built honor the lives of these fallen men and women.
And yet I believe our greatest tribute to their memories lies elsewhere. The grand gestures are important, but it is often the small ones that are the most telling. We honored their memories by going back to work in the days following Sept. 11, 2001. We paid tribute by reaching out to each other rather than allowing ourselves to become divided.
Ten years ago we stood frozen in time. Ten years later we will never forget this rupture, but neither have we allowed ourselves to remain frozen, paralyzed with fear. We pick up, we start again and we move on. Our greatest memorial to the lives lost is in our endurance. We carry on your memory and uphold the American spirit you died for.
Katie's column runs weekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at k.mcnally@cavalierdaily.com.
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