Remembering

9/11 is never far from my mind. I remember it like it was yesterday, it affects me still. The sheer improbability that planes would hit the two towers, the pentagon, possibly another DC target. That the towers would fall. That so many people would die or lose loved ones. Never in my lifetime did I think that would happen in our country. And even when it was happening, it didn't feel like it was happening. I was too far away, out here in California. I wanted to be closer. I remember that massive sense of loss, and the sense that things had changed irrevocably- and forever.

I'm letting the grief wash over me today again, which I haven't allowed in many years. I want to remember. Life is never normal again after that kind of... event. I saw a TV special about the children of 9/11 who lost parents. One boy never met his father because his mom was pregnant when he died. One girl, now woman really, honored her firefighter dad with a tattoo. It was a moving piece.

I knew two people that perished that day. I honor their memory today, and I mourn for them. 
Bob McIlvaine
Chris Mello