Well today is 9-11, a day we will always remember, it's been 6 years and a day I will never forget but I'll get back to that.
Julie has been on my mind today--it would have been her 51st birthday, I miss her alot. This is one of the last pictures I have of her taken at her daughter's reception taken the fall before she died. Even though it's cool out and late in the season, I saw a dragonfly this morning, she came to say "HI" to me.
9-11 is one of those days that if you were alive, you will always remember what you were doing and where you were, like the day JFK was killed, or the first man walked on the moon, or the shuttle explosion......I was at work that morning (9-11-01)at the hospital. We were going to have a birthday party for my friend Julie, One of the radios started talking about the first airplane crash into the World Trade Center. We then turned all the radios on in our department, no TV's available to us. I called home, my son was in the middle of basic training for the Army. What a scary thought -- I had no idea what would happen to them, would they stop training, would they send them someplace I didn't want him to be, etc. I was so scared, my only child in the military and what would happen now? Though we live a couple hundred miles north of NYC, we have many people at our hospital with loved ones working there and living there...surgery was cancelled for the most part that day because we had surgeons with grown children that worked in the Trade Center towers and they were having trouble getting through to find out if they were alive. I left work early that day, just in time to get home and see it re-played on TV again and again. We couldn't get through to my son. He called a few days later, they had no clue, they weren't told what happened--the news was kept from them. He later went off to war--at the tender age of 20....my baby a veteran of a foreign war before he was 22. It was tough for awhile, but we survived and learned a few things...the most important being--have a PLAN, know how and who you are going to get ahold of when something major happens. Live today like it's your last---LOVE your family, HUGS are free and easily given...don't sweat the little things, they'll be non issues soon enough.
1 comment:
Karen,
Beautifully written...it did change us all. I was at work - many many of our students are from NYC so they cancelled classes since most of our students were standing around the tvs in the student union. We left the office at about 1 oclock...and after a brief phone call from Laurie to Ron, we knew that she knew about it. She was doing some training at Fort Sam Houston and they couldn't get out of there for days afterward. And we knew that she would no longer serve in a time of peace. Six years later - and yet still on our hearts as though it was yesterday. One comment about the next day when I went to the eye doctor - I was still upset. He not being an American was not understanding why so many schools had closed early the day of the attack. And when I said that it wasn't a very comforting time to be a military mom (he knew that Laurie is in the military) he said,
"It's about time they start earning their money..."
I walked out of that office and never looked back...and never went back either. That is the one bitter memory I have about 9-11 - that he could not understand what our nation was feeling.
Hugs, Karen. I'm glad that you Julie stops by to say hello...she seems like a wonderful person.
Post a Comment