Six Years Ago Today. . .

September 11th, 2001, for me, will always be inexorably linked with the death of my Grandma Marjorie.

I remember it like it was yesterday. Grandma had just passed away two days previously, on her would-be 50th (I think) wedding anniversary. Her death was sudden and devastating. That fateful morning, I was at my grandmother's house in Michigan, and I and my family were getting ready to go to her visitation. My sister had gone to work for what was to be half-a-day and would join us there afterward. She worked as a clerk for a federal judge in the Detroit Federal Building. She called us sometime mid-morning and asked if we were watching the television. No, we were too numb to turn on the tube. She said, "Turn it on. Something's happening." We saw that the Trade Center towers were burning and that the Pentagon had been hit. She said, "The judge is sending us home. He said 'If they can't protect the Pentagon, they can't protect us.'"

Two days later, as we were driving back to Arkansas, I remember noticing that the skies were "empty" (the planes were grounded by then); it was a tangible, almost oppressive absence of something I'd long since taken for granted, and it was eerie. During the trip, we saw more American flags on display than I'd ever seen in my life. People were hanging them on the windows of their cars, those plastic ones like the flags people display while tailgating at football games. Do you remember them? The whole country was rallying with this amazing patriotism. I still can picture the members of congress standing on the capitol steps singing "God Bless America" that night (and I wonder how that came to be). After that, it became the nation's new battle cry and was played so much that I, if nothing else, finally learned the words.

I don't think I have ever properly reacted to or fully processed my thoughts about the tragedy of September 11th because I was already in the throes of my own personal grief at the time of the attacks. The first loss, my grandma, changed me forever (I had never lost a close family member prior to that--nor since then, thankfully--and it was many years before I could speak of her death without crying, however because of her I CAN talk about death now, a skill that I use on a pretty regular basis in my nursing career). The second loss, 9/11, changed the world forever--my generation's "Pearl Harbor". This post is my "Where-were-you-when. . ."

And now, it's your turn; where were YOU when you first learned of the 9/11 attacks?

♦