Lacking the words

I feel anger. I feel frustration and loss. I feel a rush of emotions, but mainly a numbing feeling.

The anniversary of 9/11 comes up every year and I always try to take stock of what I’m feeling. I can never quite put my finger on the boiling pot of emotions that rage inside of my heart. I know there will be pieces written today, both by national news figures and fellow bloggers, on the twenty-third anniversary. I want to magically turn back time and prevent it from happening. I want to wipe it from existence and bring back everyone who perished. Of course, I can’t, but it doesn’t stop me from wishing that I could.

When I stop and think about 9/11, the thing that comes to mind first is how bright and sunny the day was. The weather was perfect and we were going to celebrate a birthday party that night. As I left the house, I made plans to sneak out at lunch. I wanted to pick out an extra special gift for the birthday girl. I never did get to the store. It took a back seat.

But I didn’t know then what was about to happen. Instead, I drove into work with my windows down and was excited about a beautiful fall day. I was late getting into work that day, but it was such a nice day that I didn’t mind.

I was at work only for a short while, when we heard about the first plane, crashing into the North Tower. Before we saw the images on TV or the Internet, we all wondered how that could even happen. We thought maybe the broadcasters had misspoken. My boss had just managed to find a TV and set it up in our work area when we saw that a second plane had crashed into the South Tower. News would continue the rest of the morning: two more crashes into a field in Somerset County and the Pentagon, and then, of course, the two tower collapses.

At the time, I worked at a financial services firm. We had so many questions that day about friends and coworkers in New York. On top of that, I had concerns about family working in the towers. And others in Manhattan. Were they alive? Were they lost?

With that in mind, I feel like I should write something today about the day, but nothing new really comes. I try to open up a vein and write, as they say, but nothing comes. The best I can do is pray to God and offer my prayers to the victims and their families. I pray that they have found peace.

I wish I could write more, but maybe that will have to be enough.

. . . . .

“Those we love never truly leave us. There are things that death cannot touch.” —Jack Thorne

“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose; all that we deeply love becomes a part of us.” —Helen Keller

“Never. We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; they don’t disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms.” —Paulo Coelho 

“Grief is the price we pay for love.” —Queen Elizabeth II