Silence

I had no specific plans to watch (or not watch) the coverage of the 10 year anniversary of September 11th. I hadn't actively sought out to remember the day in several years now. Like many other painful anniversaries it has seemed less painful the last few years and more of a time to think yes, I remember when it happened. Sometimes not hitting me until the day after, that another year had passed. I knew that this year was the 10 year anniversary and I'd marveled at how 10 years had passed. It seems so long ago and yet like just last year.

Tonight between watching stuff from DVR I saw that they were scheduled to show the movie about Flight 93. My first thought was that I wasn't going to watch that. I had tried a couple of years ago to watch the movie that was made about the police and fire teams that were at Ground Zero immediately after it happened and the tragedy of their loss but couldn't get into it for whatever reason. I figured it would be similar with this movie. Turns out though that I was quickly enthralled with it. I then went on to watch a documentary about a photographer from FEMA and her experiences and those of the people she photographed while there. It was very moving and brought back so much more than I would have expected it to do.

I know that anyone who was alive and old enough to understand at that time remembers where they were. Watching these two shows tonight showed me real life stories that I had either forgotten or missed during those following days and months. Things that I felt or experienced at the time but that I haven't thought about for years. Not just where I was but what my first thoughts were. The things unknown that first awful day. Being unsure where or from whom the attacks came from. The idea of terrorism here seeming so incredibly foreign. The fear. Walking through a hospital where every single able person was riveted to the televisions around them. I remember it dredging up all the fearful things my mom used to tell me about Armageddon and wondering if this was how it began. I remember who I spent time with that day and those images that played the first day. I remember several days later renting movies to get away from the ever repeating images. The one thing that I know I had forgotten until watching these shows tonight though, was the silence in the days immediately following. The skies above silent with no hint of any air craft, not even the Life Flight helicopters flying. Sitting outside, looking at the sky and wondering if anything would ever be the same.

Looking back now I know that there is so much that is vastly different from what life used to look like, when we were all still innocent of what could happen. Yet how adaptable we are and how it seems that people rarely stop to look at the changes we see and how they have shaped our lives and our view of the world around us. It sometimes seems as if nothing is the same and yet other times as if everything is the same.