Ten Years Later...

It's hard for me to grasp the simple fact that ten years have already passed since that day.

And I am certainly no Alexandre Dumas, reuniting four friends decades after they met in otherwise haphazard circumstances over various affairs of honor.

It seems that every generation has its date to remember. For example, the day Princess Diana died. Or the day the United States of America declared itself independent of its British origins, except in law books.

My mother and father could remember exactly where they were when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and I know I will never forget the morning of September 11, 2001.

I was expecting another normal day of classes, working for my undergraduate degrees at the University of Missouri - Columbia. How wrong I was, and how complacent.

I remember I was trying to be very quiet because my then roommate had been up late the night before. I had no wish to disturb her and was preparing for my day when the phone scared me.

I lunged to grab it before it could ring again, in the hope of allowing my roommate more time to sleep. Since I had not been expecting a call of any sort, I was terribly surprised to hear my mother's voice, full of stress, ordering me to turn on the television.

I asked her why, and she only repeated that I needed to turn on the TV and that we were under attack.

So I obeyed.

And then I screamed.

To this day, I cannot stand to watch much of the video from that morning. It haunts me.

Much of the rest of that day passed in a blur. I remember bits and pieces, though overall there is a sense of terrible pain.

I remember my cry brought several people running from various corners of the floor in Laws Hall, and I'm sure I was fairly hysterical. I think perhaps my outburst was the first notion many in the International House had that anything was wrong.

I managed to pull myself together to some degree and get on to my class at the School of Journalism. Only, when I got there, it was to learn class had been canceled and everyone was sitting in the large lab with the news playing on the projector screen.

That was the first time I met Greeley Kyle, whose class I would be taking the next semester. I was sitting there crying and he handed me some tissues.

At that point, I had no idea I had family in the burning Towers of the World Trade Center. Though I had heard of the strike at the Pentagon, I did not know my godfather had been there.

See how ignorant I was? Perhaps how naïve.

What a way for those scales to be torn from my eyes.

Some days I almost wish I could be blind once more, innocent again.

I knew such events were possible, having seen the earlier attack on the WTC and also the bombing in Oklahoma City as well as others. But this event, this tragedy, went beyond anything I think most could imagine because of the scale of it as well as the use of planes.

I saw the Towers fall, as did so many others across the country. And I simply sat there, wondering to myself, did I actually see the buildings collapse or will the smoke clear and show it still standing?

It was like a waking nightmare, a terrible vision with color, sound, fury and rage. Sometimes it seems as though that nightmare has never ended. Like the dust of the Towers' collapse has yet to clear. Where is the silver lining? If ever one existed, we needed it.

When ever I see The Tower card in my Dragon Tarot deck, I think of that sight, I remember the sound of it and the stunned silence afterward.

I recall seeing the special reports being made by people covered in the dust of destruction and wondering if they were going to get a chance to change. Would they be able to get the dust off their clothes even as they couldn't get it out of their minds and hearts?

My parents had the television on for about 48 hours straight, waiting to hear the latest, to know what was next. I'm sure many homes and places were like that in those first days. And my mother collected articles, magazines and other written artifacts, which she still has.

To this day, the holes where those buildings stood resound with the echoes of the lives lost that morning. I visited Ground Zero in 2007 and I fancy that perhaps I could hear those echoes, ringing across time, as the screams of the High Ones rang out in "Elf Quest" to the ears of a sensitive child who was the first of his people to hear the cries that had yet to occur.

The cries of the people trapped in the buildings as they tumbled to the ground below.

I think those echoes will perhaps linger there for all time, or at least as long as any are alive who witnessed that day.

Perhaps there will come a day when people wonder why we remember 9/11, much as some younger people today wonder why their elders stop and remember 12/7/1941. Or maybe it will become like Guy Fawkes Day in England, November 5.

So much has happened since then, much of which has unfortunately contained bloodshed and violence, and I'm sure more will happen in the future.

But the eventual result is not based on that day itself. It is instead based on the actions that followed.

I remember the scandal that arose from anchors and reporters wearing flag lapel pins. I remember the fuss when some places would not allow such pins to be worn.

I remember being chastised for wearing a plain black ribbon on my lapel while reporting in Jefferson City for part of my class. However, I also remember the apology I was later tendered for that chastisement because I had been wearing only a plain black ribbon, not a flag.

I wasn't wearing that ribbon out of a sense of country pride, but in mourning for the lives so needlessly taken, on the planes and on the ground. The lives cut short in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

History will remember that day for the pain it engendered, but it will also remember that day for the war that followed. A war that is still being fought today, ten years later, in the land where the attacks were supposedly planned.

Honestly, I doubt we will ever know the truth of the plans behind that day, where they were formulated and who was really involved.

To my mind, some of the things that occurred in the aftermath, such as the Patriot Act and the violence and prejudice against all Muslims in America, were far too hastily undertaken.

Unfortunately, such was the state of this country that something had to be done, or at least there needed to be an appearance that something was being done. A hollow comfort it turned out to be, and one I think we may regret for years.

It was days later I learned my godfather was in the Pentagon, and that he most likely would have been in the section of the building hit. I also eventually learned of two cousins who had been in the Towers.

Luckily, all three escaped.

I don't know what my stance would be if any of them had been lost among the many who were.

I know one of those cousins is still suffering from that day because of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He and many others will perhaps suffer the rest of their lives.

Eventually, the pain will dim and the scars fade. However, I find them still too raw to look back with equanimity yet on that day and the years since.

The fear still lingers, and the resulting hate. It is quite possible those too will linger, beneath the surface, waiting to erupt once again like a persistent boil.

I hope that someday there can be peace. But I know that will not happen as long as people point at each other and proclaim the differences, rave that someone or a group is evil/tainted/wrong for believing or living differently.

For I feel that is exactly what led to this day, a day I will never forget.

Ten years may have passed, but some things are slow to heal. Chasms were rift that day, and bridges across them have yet to be sturdily built. For now, they remain flimsy things, built from straws, bubblegum and faint hope.

Perhaps these canyons can be bridged and perhaps they cannot. I cannot say, nor would I want to try. It will take the continuing work of many to do so. For many years and many people, a step at a time, away from pain and loss and suffering...

I look back and hope that I will never see anything like September 11, 2001 ever again.

Remembering 9/11 with National Geographic on Facebook.