The sorrow of 9/11 will never relent

I grew up during a time when parents didn’t worry so much. 

You could spend your entire summer day on your bike and only be required to turn up at lunch and then again for supper.

Regardless of the weather, you walked to school every day and promised to only cross at the traffic lights. No one worried that your journey was a mile away and that you wouldn’t return home each day safe and sound.

I remember vividly the day that changed.  In 1963 I was seven years old when the Mother Superior of the Catholic school I attended made an announcement over the school’s public address system. “The President has been shot. Send the children home.” 

Ordinarily we would have been required to form lines then proceed silently to each stair landing until we were given permission to move.  We did this with military precision three times a day for my entire childhood.  On that day we just left.

Not a single parent was in sight.  I crossed the street to the corner gas station and was about to jump on the pressure hose to ring an alert bell but somehow thought better of it. Men sat on old milk crates and held their hands to their faces in disbelief.  It was the first time I ever saw grown men crying.  One of them got up and hugged me.

As I walked the mile home I could hear people sobbing inside their homes.  I was nervous approaching my own house wondering what I would do if my own parents were that upset.  I was only home a few minutes when my father rushed through the door and grabbed my mother.  Parents don’t cry, I remembering thinking.  I was wrong.  The whole world would never be the same after one president’s assassination.

In 2001 I didn’t think steel could melt.  I was in a horrible rush that September 11 morning and was so annoyed with my children that we were late.  I had an important board meeting and was frustrated at the prospect of negotiating rush hour traffic going up-town to their school only to have to turn around and head down town a few blocks away from the World Trade Center.

When we arrived at their school I practically threw them out of the car.  “C’mon, let’s go; let’s go…I’m late.  Grab your stuff and move it.”  I had no time for one daughter’s apology and would later regret how callously I waved them off for their day. Determined to make the meeting I sped towards the West Side highway.  

By 8:25am I was still stuck in traffic and was several exits away when I made a decision. I got off at the nearest exit and headed back home.  What was the point I remembered thinking.  

I was standing in line at a coffee shop when the first plane hit. A young woman standing next to me was on her cellphone desperately pleading with a friend to get out of the Towers.  She didn’t care, she told her friend, if it were a Cessna that hit the building; it was too dangerous to stay. Then her phone went dead. Minutes later, the second plane hit. 

We witnessed tragedy

My girls. I was nearly a mile from their school but it would take me hours to get to them. The transverse roads across Central Park were blocked and I had no choice but to make my way north from the East Side to the top of the park and then turn southward to their school.  It was the longest way I have ever taken to travel the shortest distance.  

September 11, 2001 would be the first time in my children’s young lives that they would witness an unforgivable and an inexplicable ruthless event and be fully aware of the consequences.   We stood silently on the sidewalk and watched as people made their way home. Most were covered with soot from the smoke and many cried openly as they walked along.  One man’s suit hung on him in tatters but he still carried his briefcase.  Like my own parents, so long ago, I didn’t have any answers.  I still don’t. 

Twelve years later I think of the hours endured by desperate families and friends hoping and praying that the unthinkable hadn’t happened to their love ones.  I think of the pictures posted outside of St. Vincent’s Hospital and the vigils kept.  I think of the most beautiful blue sky that went silent for weeks and I think of the heroes too.  

The “Tribute in Light” will illuminate the Manhattan sky once again from sunset until dawn for the victims of September 11.   In spite of the years, there can be no relief from the relentless sorrow that will forever burden the hearts of the victim’s families.  Like the first time the world stood still for one man, we stand in solemn respect for the families and the 2,996 innocent lives that were lost, and are left to ponder what is happening to our world.