A tragedy in my lifetime

2,997 people died.
A total of 411 emergency workers died as they tried to rescue people and fight fires.



link to Wikipedia article

It was horrifying. It was heartbreaking.

I was at my job. At an electrical supply company... there was a lighting fixture showroom, and a television set, just outside the window of the cashier's booth/reception desk, where I was stationed. 

My supervisor arrived a few minutes late, out of breath, and talking about how an airplane hit the World Trade Center in New York.  She heard it on the radio.  

We turned on the television.  We watched in stunned horror, as a plane hit one of the towers.... "you said this already happened, and it says LIVE on the tv screen....."  Oh my God! it was a second plane, hitting the second tower.

Silence followed. Coworkers gathered in front of the television. I climbed up and sat on the counter, at my station, and watched through the window.  No one spoke. 

Thus we remained for the day, except that some of us went to a different room for a while, individually, wordlessly, and wept.  All those people.... office workers, restaurant workers, rescue workers..... 
................
I called my mother at home.  She had Alzheimer's Disease. I talked her through getting the television turned on, through the use of two remote controls, and got her to tune in to CNN.  She was horror-struck and spellbound for two days.  

I bought a new United States flag, and hung it in the front window.  

Our world changed forever on that day.

.........................
years later, in the nursing home, my mother with Alzheimer's Disease asked me what 9/11 meant.  I told her she didn't want to know that,.... thankful that she could not remember.
........................
I have been to "Ground Zero" the site of the World Trade Center Twin Towers.  I visited it with coworkers.  We cried together.
.......................
I have been to the the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  I cried alone.
.......................
I have not been to The Pentagon.

.........................
for the first 3 years I could not watch anything about 9/11/2001 on television without weeping. and by weeping, I mean gut-wrenching sobbing.  I stopped watching anything connected to 9/11/2001. 
For 3 more years, until September of 2007, I would not watch or read anything about 9/11/2001.

.................
2,997 people died.

........... 
Never forget.