Find your diamond
Find your jewelry
shape
carat
color
clarity

9/11

Begonia

Begonia

Ideal_Rock
Joined
Feb 2, 2011
Messages
3,726
Sat down after a long day to watch a bit of telly.

They are starting to play the documentaries about 9/11 again. I forget and then there they are, and I think has another year passed already?

I watched one.

It was so vivid, like it happened yesterday.

Still so awful, scarey, sad, tragic, traumatizing, heartbreaking, anger-provoking...and other feelings beyond words.

:blackeye:
 
I know, sometimes I feel like it happened yesterday.
 
Yes, it feels like it happened yesterday much of the time to me as well. I work a few blocks from the site and I remember every detail like it was yesterday. It was chaotic and surreal. I am not looking forward to going in this Tuesday. Each anniversary is still so upsetting and the fact that it is on a Tuesday this year makes it worse. :((
 
Living abroad on 9/11 is...strange. When I lived in the US, I was clueless as to how much this event affected people around the world. Australians remember with us though, as I am sure other cultures do. People here generally move quietly around me on the anniversary, leaving me to my thoughts. I prefer it that way, it's still raw, isn't it?
 
I find that each anniversary brings a new sense of loss around the event because of the different stages of life I've gone through since then. When the towers fell, I was a senior in High School, and I mourned mostly for the children who lost their parents. Last year, I mourned for the men and women who lost their spouses, as it was my first time marking the anniversary as a wife. Somewhere inbetween, I was most saddened by those who were just starting out...their first job out of college, perhaps...and who never had the opportunity to get a promotion...a raise...

If any of you get a chance to visit the Newseum in Washington, DC, they have an incredibly poignant 9/11 memorial, including the communications tower from I believe 1 WTC.

Never forget.
 
It is still vivid and probably always will be for me. It was such a beautiful clear day in the Detroit area. The courthouse was immediately evacuated. I remember watching the tv coverage all day, stunned. The Washington DC memorial is very moving.
 
I live 12 miles or so from ground sero and I am still incredible ANGRY about it. I have been told to move past it but I can't. I hold a lot of emotion inside because people just don't want to talk about it anymore.
 
It will always be a "where were you" moment for me. Just like when JFK was shot, even though I was in grade school I remember like it was yesterday.
I'm in Canada, at the time I worked in metal sales and the US was my main territory. I remember one of my clients called and told me they were under attack and I laughed and thought he was joking. He said, I'm not joking, just turn on your TV. I was taken aback and hung up then went to our lounge and did just that. That was how we all found out what happened. We were all in shock that morning and had radios on as well trying to keep track of what was going on. It was incredible that such a thing could happen. It drove home that fact that nowadays the world is a much smaller place.
 
justginger|1347274817|3265075 said:
Living abroad on 9/11 is...strange. When I lived in the US, I was clueless as to how much this event affected people around the world. Australians remember with us though, as I am sure other cultures do. People here generally move quietly around me on the anniversary, leaving me to my thoughts. I prefer it that way, it's still raw, isn't it?
Click to expand...


Canada cried with you... :blackeye:
 
As mimi123 said, it remains a 'where were you' thing. I grew up in NJ, and was living there again on that day. Surreal was a good way to describe it. We were about an hour away, but our cable tv service came via the antenna on the Trade Center (I don't know exactly how that works) so, we had no cable reception for a while, until the company hooked us up to some Philly and Delaware stations, and then I was able to watch the coverage. Though I was probably better off without that, I was grateful for the PBS station, to keep the kids happy. I had to go to the grocery store for milk, people were wandering around as if in a daze. There I ran into an acquaintance, he was beside himself, worried that the attacks would continue, and being so near a major university, felt we were in eminent danger. He also had three gallons of milk and a dozen or more boxes of cereal.

While I did not lose anyone in the attacks, many were lost from my hometown and towns near it, because those towns are on the train route into the city. My aunt and uncle lost two young men they considered extended family. One was a firefighter, the other had started a new job there, that day. I had met both of them during childhood. I see their faces as if it were last week, one as a teenager, the other an adorable little boy.
 
It changed my life. As it did to so many. We lost two dear dear friends that day who were trying to make their way out...

I heard the tapes two years ago, and the pain of that did me in.


Doug Cherry

Ted Luckett


We will never ever forget. Your spirit burns bright in all of us.

Love and Peace.
 
I remember how I heard, I can still see the day, I can remember the panic and wondering "what's next??" and watching the CNN reports over and over and over. Watching the planes fly into the towers and then the clips of people jumping out. That is completely burned in my brain.

I panicked even here, in Canada, not knowing if it would be the end of the world or the start of a new world war. Wondering about my aun in NYC and could not get thru to talk to her.

I had the opportunity in 2010 to visit NYC for the first time and we made it down to Ground Zero. Even with all the construction going on, it just felt eerie and that you could 'feel' the souls in the area. It was incredibly emotional. Can't describe it.

God bless all the families and friends of those who perished on that day. I hope you eventually find peace and comfort in whatever way is best for you and your loved ones.

(AND OH HOW I CHEERED when the President came on and said that binLaden had been killed!!! I whooped and hollered and jumped around - it felt like a little bit of closure!)
 
remember like it was yesterday. i was lying in bed click on the CNBC to watch the stock market after the first plane had already hit the tower :o then the second plane hit.. :eek:
 
I was sitting at the computer logged in to another diamond site that was popular back in 2001. A jeweler from Mexico, Juan Lozano, who was also a pilot, noticed that the first plane had hit...and that it was odd. I was getting my news from the diamond site discussion, not from the television or radio. Eventually I put on the television.

My daughter was in elementary school in a Connecticut bedroom community where all the men, including my husband, commuted to New York City to work. By an incredible blessing, not one parent of a child in her school was killed (although many parents of children in town were killed). We were not to know that for several days, however, since many people were missing at first.

By an incredible freak of luck my husband was in rural Massachusetts for one day for a leadership training workshop! I was the first person to break through to the compound where the men were staying to tell them of the attacks. Naturally they broke up the workshop and everyone went home...or as far home as they could get. Manhattan was effectively sealed off by then since all the bridges to the city were closed down after the attacks. My husband brought home a fellow banker from New Jersey who couldn't get back to New Jersey...nor did he really want to. He, like my husband, only wanted to get to his office down in the financial district! Their building had been evacuated and was being guarded by the National Guard, although they didn't know that on 9/11, of course.

My husband, although he did not experience the trauma of the day first hand, was traumatized by the event. The devastation of his office building and neighborhood; the loss of friends; the soot he breathed constantly; the presence of the National Guard all just made him enraged as well as sad. I worked on eBay's Auction for America as therapy for myself, raising money for the families of workers who were lost. I know that like many other Americans, I was also sustained by the sense of family and community that pervaded the country for a couple of years after the tragedy. People picked up American flags that had fallen over. People went to non-denomenational church services. I felt that it might have been like that after the invasion of Pearl Harbor.

Deb/AGBF
:read:
 
Every year I'm shocked by how upset 9/11 makes me--this morning on my way to work I cried when they played Ray Charles' "America the Beautiful" on the radio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRUjr8EVgBg

I remember the day so vividly. My ex and I woke up, he got ready for work, I got ready for school and we had no clue what was happening until we were walking out to our cars and our neighbors stopped us to ask if we knew what was going on. We went into their apartment to watch the news, and my first reaction when I saw the burning buildings was to laugh--not because it was funny--it was a totally inappropriate reaction because I was so overwhelmed and just couldn't comprehend what was going on and that what I was seeing was real. Then the second plane hit. We knew this was no accident. It was so unreal. Watching people jump to their death, seeing the destruction to the Pentagon, the stories of the plane crash in PA... It was so horrifying and sickening, yet we couldn't pull ourselves away.

We had a terrible realization that a mutual friend who had just moved to NYC weeks before to take a job at Cantor Fitzgerald was in tower one. We made some phone calls and found out that Chris was still alive and talking to his parents on the phone. He was telling them that there was fire and they couldn't get down the stairwells, but they were told that help was coming. Then the phone lines went dead. When the towers came crashing down, we knew it was over and Chris was gone. They never recovered his body. Our entire high school must have turned out for his funeral and his parents chose "Battle Hymn of the Republic". Those days and weeks after the attacks were so surreal and bizzarre, yet there was such a sense of patrotism and unity in grief.

DF went to Columbia University and was a senior in college when the attacks happened. The experience of living though 9/11 in NYC affected him deeply and is a big part of what made him want to become a firefighter.
 
ohmygod. this... just. *cries*

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Father-s-note-changes-family-s-9-11-account-3850490.php#photo-3434121

My brother worked within a block of the Twin Towers at the time. I remember waiting, waiting... Finally my mother got a call: Will you accept a collect call from ---- phone goes dead. The phone rings, another operator: Will you accept a ---- dead line, again. The phone rings again, and as soon as the operator starts the question, my mom hears his voice: Tell my mom I'm okay! Just tell her ---- the phone goes dead again, but as it does, my mother can hear the operator crying, my brother still speaking in the background.
 
yanaazul|1347404587|3266317 said:
ohmygod. this... just. *cries*

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Father-s-note-changes-family-s-9-11-account-3850490.php#photo-3434121

My brother worked within a block of the Twin Towers at the time. I remember waiting, waiting... Finally my mother got a call: Will you accept a collect call from ---- phone goes dead. The phone rings, another operator: Will you accept a ---- dead line, again. The phone rings again, and as soon as the operator starts the question, my mom hears his voice: Tell my mom I'm okay! Just tell her ---- the phone goes dead again, but as it does, my mother can hear the operator crying, my brother still speaking in the background.
Click to expand...

I keep getting chills now, having read this account. The stories of what people went through that day have brought 9/11 back to me viscerally. I said I wouldn't forget, but I meant that I wouldn't forget "in my my mind and heart". My body seems unable to forget, either.

I am glad to be among friends here.

Hugs to all of you,
Deb
:read:
 
My reaction that day, as I happened to watch it happen live on the morning news, was a horrible sinking feeling of "Oh no, not again. This CAN'T be happening AGAIN."

It was like a flashback - only far worse - of the Murrah bombing, which I also remember like it was yesterday. In the first, I was only 8 blocks from the Murrah Building, and we lost windows and were later evacuated because they were afraid of the ATF firearms and bomb materials accidentally blowing up, and the second, on 9-11, the few of us that actually made it to work were sent right back home, since I worked at the time at a federal installation.

Surreal. Both of them.
 
GET 3 FREE HCA RESULTS JOIN THE FORUM. ASK FOR HELP
Jewelry Blog
PriceScope-Concierge-Ad
Find prime cuts.
Top