Has it really been four years?
Tomorrow it will be. I find it hard to believe so much time has passed since the day the world seemed to change. I grew up with terrorist attacks, knowing that a bomb could explode either in my home town or elsewhere in the country, it was part of living in the UK in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. My father was a police officer so checking under the car before getting into it became almost second nature, though I am sure my Dad didn’t want us to realize he was doing it half the time.
We had a small RAF base just up the road from us, I had friends and family members in the armed forces. I was cleared out of work, theatres, cinema’s, pubs and more over bomb alerts. It was just a part of life.
Yet the destruction of the World Trade Center rocked my world and the lives of billions. It didn’t matter how much we’d lived through, or seen first hand, this was live, in our faces as the planes hit, as the towers fell. In full color, full horror, there was no way of ignoring it, down playing it or shrugging it off as just a part of life.
The world changed that day.
Sarah was a little over a year old, my parents had only just gone home to the UK by a few months after their only visit here. I found myself wondering what would have happened if it had been their flight. Then I thought of my husband, working then for Rosenbluth International on their flight help desk. When he came home I saw it clearly, the horror in his eyes, the men and women frantic on the other end of the line as he had been unable to say anything, unable to help, even though he had had the list of the passengers in front of him for over an hour. He knew who had checked in and who had not, yet he could not even offer a single word of comfort. It destroyed a part of him.
We lived so far away from NYC but we were still hit by it.
I can’t tell you what I feel now about that day because there is a numb spot inside me surrounding that date. I can’t process it, the numbers of dead, the amount of destruction, all I can understand is the look in my husband’s eyes when he came home and the nightmares that followed for him.
Four years ago and he still winces if you mention that day, there’s a shadow that claims his eyes. It wasn’t just those frantic calls of families, but the chaos that followed for those trying to help stranded passengers. But the worst of it is the memory of those calls, the families he couldn’t reach out and help, not even to say ‘No s/he wasn’t on the plane’…
How many other men and women are like my Sam and still deal with the memory of those frantic calls?
We had a small RAF base just up the road from us, I had friends and family members in the armed forces. I was cleared out of work, theatres, cinema’s, pubs and more over bomb alerts. It was just a part of life.
Yet the destruction of the World Trade Center rocked my world and the lives of billions. It didn’t matter how much we’d lived through, or seen first hand, this was live, in our faces as the planes hit, as the towers fell. In full color, full horror, there was no way of ignoring it, down playing it or shrugging it off as just a part of life.
The world changed that day.
Sarah was a little over a year old, my parents had only just gone home to the UK by a few months after their only visit here. I found myself wondering what would have happened if it had been their flight. Then I thought of my husband, working then for Rosenbluth International on their flight help desk. When he came home I saw it clearly, the horror in his eyes, the men and women frantic on the other end of the line as he had been unable to say anything, unable to help, even though he had had the list of the passengers in front of him for over an hour. He knew who had checked in and who had not, yet he could not even offer a single word of comfort. It destroyed a part of him.
We lived so far away from NYC but we were still hit by it.
I can’t tell you what I feel now about that day because there is a numb spot inside me surrounding that date. I can’t process it, the numbers of dead, the amount of destruction, all I can understand is the look in my husband’s eyes when he came home and the nightmares that followed for him.
Four years ago and he still winces if you mention that day, there’s a shadow that claims his eyes. It wasn’t just those frantic calls of families, but the chaos that followed for those trying to help stranded passengers. But the worst of it is the memory of those calls, the families he couldn’t reach out and help, not even to say ‘No s/he wasn’t on the plane’…
How many other men and women are like my Sam and still deal with the memory of those frantic calls?
posted by Terri Pray | 7:03 PM
1 Comments:
Well written and thoughtful.
Dad
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