The Day After 9/11

It escaped my attention and it shouldn't have

Photo by Aidan Bartos on Unsplash

Yesterday, I was heading to the gym when I got a text that read, “Thinking of you today.”

It was from a friend who now lives several states away, but on 9/11, she lived minutes away and came by, on that day, with freshly made rice pudding as she watched my daughter while I went to a client meeting. My daughter was a young teen who had just been through painful oral surgery and was now recuperating at home, with the help of my friend and some rice pudding.

Until receiving that text, it had completely escaped me that today marked the 24th anniversary of 9/11. When I dropped off my dog, Teddy, I felt so embarrassed and asked my dog sitter whether she realized today was 9/11.

“Really? I hadn’t noticed that. Wow, I must be losing it,” she said.

Or maybe we all are.

I went to the gym and ran into a trainer that I knew. I asked him the same question.

“I realized this just a few minutes ago. I know we should remember, but there are so many other traumas we are dealing with.”

True dat.

No excuses

Twenty-four years ago, the day was traumatic for me before it became traumatic for the world.

My husband was in the hospital, in isolation with a bad case of pneumonia. They kept him there for a full week. Even back then, that was a very long length-of-stay.

Two blocks away, my daughter was at the Children’s hospital, having just experienced oral surgery that left her mouth wired shut. She was being released to go home on 9/11.

I was going back and forth between hospitals while also managing my kids, who were at home. It was a lot, but when you’re in that kind of crazy vortex, you just push on and don’t think about it.

9/11 changed that.

I was in the car, driving my daughter home from the hospital, when I heard on NPR that a plane had crashed into the Twin Towers. I called my father-in-law, who is the original news junkie. He verified the information, and as I spoke with him, NPR had announced another plane had crashed into a tower.

What does one believe? What does this mean? So many questions, and I had a family who was weathering their own health challenges.

I clearly wasn’t processing my world well because I kept my client meeting (I still can’t believe I did that), and came home after to fully digest the news. It was, of course, heartbreaking.

I checked in with my brother, who lives in New Jersey, but works in New York. Manhattan was on lockdown, and my brother walked miles to cross the bridge before catching a bus home.

There were so many stories, so many heroes, and so much wonder about how evil can show itself in ways never imagined.

The following year, my husband would send a large fruit basket to the ward that cared for him as a way of saying thank you for helping him get through a really tough time.

And in the ways that a tragedy like 9/11 lingers, my world has been filled with odd moments where I still see loss. A dog lover who lives nearby, but who I don’t know well, walks his dog Watson. We’ve not talked much, but he did share that he lost his partner in one of the towers, and Watson has become the companion of choice forever after.

When I joined a group of mahjongg players this year, a woman shared that she lost a brother on the flight that was to be heading to Los Angeles, but had instead crashed into the tower.

The tragedy left scars that will never heal, but as I consider my delayed reaction in recognizing the painful anniversary of 9/11, I believe that the assassination that happened two days ago diverted my attention, like it did for many.

Way smarter people than I have ideas of how we can possibly reset our culture, but I suspect one strong element will be to have a memory of what we’ve been through as a nation and still survived, with purpose and resilience.

9/11 was a catastrophic storm that we should never forget, and it changed us forever. So will yesterday’s evil. We are a nation in shock.

Maybe, and this is the positivity that defines me and may irritate others, we can do something with this pain that sets us on a path of redemption and healing.

The question will be whether we can make a commitment to ourselves and our communities to find ways to negotiate painful disagreements, but in ways that only use words. That used to be our way… before 9/11 and before so much more.