"The world is changed: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, I smell it in the air...Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it." Galadriel, from the opening monologue of Fellowship of the Ring
That quote has nothing to do with 9/11/01. But it also has everything to do with it. Things have never been the same since that day. We eat; we sleep; we pray; we laugh; we love. But everything is different now. Or, at least, since that day, our eyes have been opened to how different things already were. For many, it took their life, or the life or lives of loved ones. For many, it took that basic sense of security, that feeling of invulnerability here in our homeland. It left in its wake: wounds, both physical and emotional; empty seats at the dinner table, empty beds in the bedroom, empty homes, empty hearts.
You should know before reading further, that I've nothing profound or earth-shattereing to say here. Comparativley speaking, my story of 9/11/01 is mild. I was half a continent away from New York & Washington, D.C. I only knew one person in NYC at the time, and he was perfectly safe. But every American alive and aware on that day has a story to tell, a story of where he was at that moment, of what he saw, heard, and felt when it happened, when the world changed. My story is unremarkable, even dull. But it's one I'll never forget.
I was in college at Missouri Southern at the time, as I was for a very long time. It would have been a great day for me. I had a voice lesson scheduled at 10:00 am. Then Concert Choir at noon, and a voice studio class at 1 pm, then on to work at 3:30 pm. Of course, none of those things happened. All that had been scheduled was changed. After all, all that we knew was changed that day. I slept till 8:30 or so, then started getting ready for my day. I went into my bathroom to shower, turning on a CD to play while I got clean and dressed. I grabbed some breakfast, a strawberry Pop Tart, & headed out the door without ever having turned on radio or TV. I lived just over 30 minutes from the campus, and always drove through Neosho on the way. I was warming up for my voice lesson in the car, as I sometimes did; so I hadn't turned on the radio till I reached the stoplight by Wal Mart in Neosho. My radio was tuned to 103.5, which was at the time an Oldies station out of Pittsburg, KS. I'll never forget the song that was playing when I turned on the radio: "If You Want to Be Happy for the Rest of Your Life, don't go make a pretty woman your wife." The song finished, and they immediately cut away to CNN.
That was it. That was the moment the world changed for me. The last thing I heard before learning of these attacks was that song. It's such a crazy juxtaposition. This light-hearted, fun, frivolous tune from the 60's immediately followed by death and destruction, and a loss of our perception of safety and security. The second tower had just been hit when they cut away to CNN. It took a couple of minutes to realize exactly what the reporters were talking about. I was dazed, like I'd been hit in the head with a hammer or something. Your mind won't process certain information of that intensity. It tries to protect you by fogging up the information; the information won't make any sense, as if it were given in a foreign language you only partly understand. The fog started to clear, and I began to realize this was real. People were dying, many people were injured. People were fleeing for their lives.
By the time I got to campus, they had set up a TV in the band room, and several of us were watching it in there. You all know the images we saw that day. Images of planes crashing into buildings, of towers falling to the street, of mountains of dust chasing terrified people down the street. Later, we learned of so many heroes, many of them fallen, each of them worthy of rememberance. And we remember. And we mourn. And we take extra precautions. And we go on with day to day living, in the shadow cast by the events of that day. We'll never quite make it out of that shadow. But light still shines on us despite it. And, so....we eat; we sleep; we pray; we laugh; and we love. And, again, we mourn. To some degree, I think we'll always mourn. We mourn the lives lost, the securiy lost, and the innocence lost. Ten years. So long ago, and yet it also seems like just yesterday.
God bless you, you who were injured or killed in the attacks. God bless you, you who live on in their absence. God bless you, you who heroically labor to keep us safe from such attacks in the future. God bless you, bless you, and bless you again, you who risk your lives to rescue us when we're in danger from fire, from accident, and from enemy without or within. But most of all, God Bless America. May we always follow Him, praise Him, serve Him, love Him, thank Him, for all He's given, all He's done, all He's provided, and all He is.
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