Never Forget

Everyone who can remember this day has a story about where they were when they heard. For me, I was 17 and I'd never experienced so much grief, horror, and fear at the same time. And I was across the country from it. The harsh reality of not being safe was a shock.

A few years later, I was living on the east coast and was around people who had seen it in person, who had lost a loved one (sometimes more than one), who were affected by it on a much deeper, personal level. Stories that people so openly shared with me are forever in my mind.

I took a solo trip to New York City one weekend. I didn't expect to have any 9/11 stories shared with me because I didn't know anyone and I wasn't planning on asking a stranger. But I met some wonderful New Yorkers who, when they learned that I was on my first trip to New York, shared their stories with me. The valet at the train station and the cab driver who could barely speak English made huge impressions on me that day. And for them to shed a tear with a stranger, remembering a day nearly four years prior, really showed me that such an awful thing truly did bring the country together.

We will never forget.