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Three Years Later...
It is September again. The skies are that brilliant deep blue that September so often brings. The days are sunny, the nights crisp and cool. It is, here, today, so much like it was three years ago ...
It all began at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001. Unthinkably. Unimaginably. Unforgettably. At that moment, American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston, Massachusetts, crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. And at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2004, we in the New York area will -- or at least should -- begin our remembrance with a moment of silence.
Then, in the pit where the great towers once stood, the families will lay their flowers and say their prayers and the parents and grandparents will read the names, one by one, nearly 3,000 in all...
At 9:03 a.m. on September 11, three years ago, a second hijacked airliner, United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston, crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center and exploded. Both buildings were burning. And today, three years later, at that moment, the reading of the names will pause...
At 9:59 a.m. that brilliant September morning three years ago, the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, crashing into the streets below. Today, three years later, at that moment, the reading of the names will pause...
At 10:29 a.m. on Tuesday, the 11th of September 2001, the World Trade Center's north tower collapsed from the top down. A cloud of ash turned day to night in the narrow streets of lower Manhattan. Today, three years later, at that moment, the reading of the names will pause...
During the day on September 11, 2004, buglers from the New York Police Department (23 dead) and the Fire Department of New York (343 dead) will play Taps. The skirl of bagpipes will be heard. Church bells will ring. (St. Peter's Church in lower Manhattan will toll bells for seven hours.) Flags will fly. And at the end of the day two enormous beams of light will rise into the night sky where the towers once stood.
Nearly three thousand lives ended that day, three years ago. Men. Women. Children. The oldest was 85. The youngest was two. They died in an instant, vaporized by fireballs. They died long agonizing terrifying minutes later, trapped in the smoke and the flames. They died jumping from the upper floors of the Twin Towers. They died in the Pentagon. They died in a field in Pennsylvania.
And here I sit, three years later, and I find that I am so angry. People I knew. People I worked with. My neighbors. My friends. Struck down so senselessly. And those responsible are still out there. It is simply inconceivable to me that, with all the vast resources of this country, Osama bin Laden is still out there. I was trained as a lawyer and as a prosecutor. I believe in justice and I believe deeply in the rule of law. And I want those who committed these acts brought to account for what they did.
Sometimes I think this anger, this rage, this fury, is better than the pain and fear I've felt on earlier anniversaries of this date. More often I think it merely masks it -- that the wounds are still raw. Like so many others here, I am still easily brought to tears by reminders of that terrible day. Like so many others here, I fear we will never really heal.
It doesn't help that we had to turn Boston and New York into armed camps this summer to protect our political conventions. It doesn't help that the entire area around a building in the city where I work is cordoned off because it was identified as having been scouted as a potential target by al Qaeda operatives. It doesn't help that more than 300 people -- so many of them children -- died at the hands of terrorists in Beslan last week, nor that a dozen or more died in a terrorist bombing in Jakarta this week... I don't know if anything will help. I don't know if we who have lived through these terrible events will ever fully recover.
So why am I sitting here tonight writing this? Why do I keep going to the websites with the pictures of that terrible day? Why do I keep opening and staring down into the film canister into which I gathered a handful of the ash from the World Trade Center when I went over to the city to see Ground Zero with my own eyes?
I don't know that I can say, really. I guess, mostly, it's for the same reason that I went to New York that day in 2001 and gathered the ash -- to stand witness. To make sure that I do not forget. That we do not forget. That no-one forgets. That nearly 3,000 lives will never be forgotten.
To say, one more time, this year and every year, as long as I have life and breath, in words and images, NEVER FORGET.
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