How to get through this day

Every year I get a feeling of awareness for this day as it approches.  I wonder what I can do, how I will commemorate it, what I will wear, how i will feel....

Then it's here.  And I dress as I normally do, I don't set out to do anything special to commemorate it; I just think and feel sad.

I think about what I was doing for every minute of that day from the moment Scott and Todd reported that a plane flew into the first tower - when everyone still thought it was a weird accident.  Walking into my office building with my supervisor, Jeff Reynolds, and others...Turning on the television to watch the coverage and seeing; SEEING a second plane fly into the other tower!

It was the most surreal moment and we all freaked out.  Nothing confirmed yet about hijacked airplanes, that was still an unthinkable option.

Then the reports came in... 2 other planes.... Pentagon......missing plane..... all airtraffic downed.  The phone lines all jammed up.  Trying to reach my husband in the city, calling my sister in law's office line just 2 blocks over from the trade center.  Calling my mother in law.  The day care center where my kids were.  The cousins who are FDNY.

It was just one long nightmarish day.

So, today is the day.  Already at 9a.m. I've shed tears as I read on Facebook everyone's memories.  As I watch the Budweiser commercial, and listen to songs, And I think about all of the lives lost not just that day but in the years following:

From the war on terror that is still going on
From the cancers that have been diagnosed from working at ground zero in all of that horrible aftermath
From the lives taken due to despair and distress of living without loved ones, and PTSD

Then I think about how this country of people - who came together so beautifully in the aftermath of that tragic day - has slowly over 14 years erroded into the very kind of people that the terrorists so despise and hoped to turn us into.  We fight among ourselves, Adults and children are self centered and grasping. Everything is a joke to be posted on Facebook and Youtube and Instagram.  Someone's shame is another person's viral video..and then they are further immortalized by the 6 o'clock news in a 30 second news bit that is played over and over and over.

In 2009 the Black Eyed Peas released a song called "Where is the Love" which, from the first moment, has struck a chord in me.  It perfectly addresses everything that is wrong with the world we are living in.  Of course by now, 6 years later, the lyrics while still meaningful are inadequate in their suggestion.

We can go on believing today that we are all for one and one for all but if we are realistic; that has not been the case since the first anniversary of 9/11.    That is what makes me sad the most.

-Peace