Never Forget [10.31.13]

Being only six years old, the worst thing  that had happened to me up until then was losing my grandmother. But the loss from 9/11 was on a much bigger scale and something I never really came to grasps with. I remember how we were sent home early that day and how that night my whole family met up in my aunt’s tiny apartment with eyes glued to the TV screen in unbelief as the two towers began to collapse. The rest was honestly a blur but the two things I remember were how the next nights would be spent attending prayer vigils and people crying out to God and how in school, my friends would tell of stories they heard from their parents and from the news or about the loved ones they had lost. As much as I was as hurt and angry and scared as all these other people, I never felt it being something real or rather I never wanted to accept it as something that truly happened and that those innocent people died and that this city I loved and felt safe in wasn’t as invincible as I thought it was. It was a wake up call that I didn’t want to answer. I never actually visited ground zero, except the few times I would pass it on outings with my parents. So I guess this was the first time I actually visited and it finally felt real to me. Seeing exactly where the towers stood and reading the names of the people who lost their lives finally made it a reality to me. I remember seeing the names and thinking about who they might’ve been to someone: a husband, a wife, a mother, a child… Oddly enough, the memorial wasn’t something that made you feel upset and angry. The trees and the running water. It gives peace more than anything. Despite how tragic, there’s a mutual understanding of the situation that give us as New Yorkers this unspoken bond.Now seeing the Vietnam memorial was a whole different situation. The broken water fountain, dead flowers and litter showed its abandonment. But the walls of quotes from real soldiers–that was powerful.  I feel like it didn’t have the same effect as the 9/11 memorial, but it was mostly because 9/11 occurred in my own lifetime unlike the Vietnam War. The abandonment of this memorial got me thinking about if this would be what would become of the 9/11 memorial. If in 100 years, it would not be as taken case of and the waterfalls would be running dry and the trees dead. But, I guess they’re two different situations. 9/11 was the first real attack on our country. Wars happen all the time. I guess the imprint on our minds is much deeper and will definitely be remembered and talked about for a long time–how through this tragedy, we were able to work through this and still stand tall.