September 11th

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was a nursing student in Albuquerque, NM. I had gotten up to get ready for a day of clinicals at a Psychiatric Hospital where I was doing a rotation on the children's unit. I remember that Alan had driven my car home from my house to his the night before, so he came by early to drop it off in order for me to be able to drive to the hospital. When he came into my room, he told me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Towers in NYC. I remember thinking (maybe saying?), "What kind of idiot would crash a plane into a building?" I thought that it was an accident. But then Alan's words, "They did it on purpose. It's a terrorist attack," made my heart stop for an instant in my chest. We went into my living room and turned on the TV with my roommates. We watched Tom Brokaw reporting. I'll never forget watching the towers collapse as he was talking; he couldn't see the picture and didn't know what was happening. I remember screaming, crying, shaking in fear and sadness.

Soon, though, I had to put myself together to get to the hospital. There were other students at the hospital, friends, who I was able to connect with. We worried about family members of friends who lived in NYC, worked at the towers. The nurses had a TV turned on at the nurse's station, so we had updates throughout the morning of what was happening. I can remember trying to help the children, children who were at such a difficult time in their lives already, understand the gravity of just what was going on.

On our lunch break, a few of us drove up to the school to check in with the College of Nursing administrators about whether or not our clinicals were cancelled. Because a lot of people in the college had connections in NY, they cancelled all activities/classes for the afternoon. I went home, and with my friends (including Alan), watched hours and hours of news coverage. We were so glued to the TV, that's what I really remember, not being able to turn it off, despite the horror that we were witnessing.

Those are memories that will be with my always, I think. Some memories are just like that, aren't they? It feels like they are ingrained deep within me somewhere--My brain, my heart, my soul? Our world changed that day. The unimaginable happened. And while it was a time of horrible darkness, we as a people in the United States changed that day. We banded together, supported each other, in a way that we hadn't done before, at least in my lifetime. We are different now, connected by a web, woven with love, charity, darkness, sadness, anger, and sacrifice. I will forever be grateful for the many men and women who, with no regard to their own safety, walked into those burning buildings, just looking to save someone else's life. My heart will always be a little bit broken for the families, so many families, who lost loved ones on that terrible day. Because for every life that was taken through those despicable acts of terrorism, so many more were broken, torn apart, left with losses that can never be filled. Today, I remember them all.

I've never been to NYC, but while in DC this summer, I was able to visit the Pentagon Memorial.

The color of the building makes it very clear where the plane hit.

The benches face opposite directions: One way for those killed in the building, one way for those who were on the plane.