need
to do this.
It’s not like I’ll ever forget the pictures of the huge jetliners slamming
into the World Trade Center towers, or the huge fireballs, or the twin
towers crumpling not unlike Three Rivers Stadium did a few months ago.
Or the crater left in the woods of western Pennsylvania that was basically
all that was left of another plane. Or the look on George W. Bush’s
face when he was told that yet another plane had crashed into the WTC.
Even if I could etch them out of my brain, they will be on the news and
in the magazines for years to come.
No, I need to remember how it felt. The way I did a double-take
when I saw the simple headline on my Yahoo homepage – “Plane Crashes into
World Trade Center Tower”. How it sounded too weird to be true.
How I frantically searched the net for a news site that actually worked
– CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, and virtually everywhere else I could think of
were overloaded – I finally found some information on sites from a Jacksonville,
Florida TV station and a newspaper from Denver. How I was too dumbfounded
to remember that I had a radio sitting in my desk drawer that I could have
been listening to. And when I finally did turn it on, how strange
it sounded to hear that one of the towers had collapsed – no, both of the
towers. Surely only the top couple of floors would have been damaged.
There had to have been something left.
How about half of the office workers were gathered in the cafeteria,
watching the events unfold on a big-screen TV, in silence. How I
left at 11:45 to go home for lunch with my wife and child, but never went
back to work (I later found out that we were allowed to go home anyway,
but I wasn’t about to wait around for official word). How I sat in
front of our TV for about ten hours straight, because I didn’t know what
else to do.
How we were expecting the big news story of the day to be the opening
of the first Krispy Kreme Doughnuts shop in the area. I had even
toyed with writing my first entry in months just because of that – now
it obviously pales in comparison with everything else that has happened
in the last 24 hours.
I need to let go of at least a little bit of the anger and pain and
rage and horrible sadness that I have. I’ve always been bad at letting
my emotions show. Even when a friend of mine committed suicide, I
never cried. In fact, another friend said that they were worried
about me more than anyone because I hadn’t cried. So I need to do
this as a release. Not like I’ll be able to go back to normal – if
I was going back to normal, I’d be doing actual work right now instead
of typing this.
I could talk about it with people -- coworkers, family, friends -- but
I'm not much of a talker under normal conditions, and something like this
makes it even harder to get the words out without choking. We had
a meeting in church where we all prayed in small groups of a half dozen
people or so each, about the families of those who were lost, and the rescuers,
and possible survivors, and our country's leaders -- and it was all I could
do to force out something coherent.
No, I need to do something in my own realm. Something I can do
where I don't feel like I'm stumbling along, half-lost. Something
lasting, so my son can come back to in twenty years to see what he lived
through, but wouldn't be able to remember on his own.
I need to write.
