Where were you on 9/11?

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 has flooded the television programing with various aspects of how that fateful, horrible day played out. Even after ten years, you can't view that day from the distance of time. I watched a moment-to-moment replay of how the first two planes plowed into the Twin Towers and it was like a time warp as I felt myself dropped back to the moment I first witnessed the events by way of computer, radio, and television.

The first inkling that something awful had happened were some e-mail postings on a group site. It was vague and all the person knew, at the moment, was that a plane had crashed into a building. Minute by minute, the news got worse. I turned on the television and the reporters and news crews were scrambling to cover something they just didn't realize the scope of   yet.

My children were 16, 14, 12, and 8 at the time. We were getting ready to head out to morning Mass with one eye on the television as the unheard of day in history unfolded. We saw/heard about the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. We got glimpses of it on the television. It wasn't real . . . yet it was. We were halfway to church when the radio announced the Pentagon had been hit . . . by another plane. It all thoroughly confirmed this was not an accident.

Since our pastor had gotten to church early, he had only heard 'something about a plane crashing into a building' and wondered about his congregation shaking their heads and looking so sad and shocked. By this time, all planes in the air were ordered down and to remain locked on the runway. I remember standing outside of the church and talking to friends. Suddenly we stopped and listened to the silence . . . we never realized how often we heard planes overhead until it stopped completely for those first few hours.

We got home just in time to see the first tower crumble. We had just come into the house and hadn't even sat down. We stood there in shock. It was such a helpless feeling as we prayed for the victims on the planes, their families, the people who didn't make it out of the towers, the responders and the deaths of the emergency crews who tried to save people.

There are a lot of stories about that day. I was just a bystander on the opposite side of the country but seeing it all shown in detail, again, brought that day immediately back to the present. We have all lived through historic events that will appear in future history books. This is an event that has been seriously etched into our hearts. We can never forget! We can never stop praying for our country, the people who lead us, and the people.