September 11

Day 236 – September 11^th, ten years later; the day that changed everything. I still remember it as if it was yesterday. Standing and watching in disbelief the pictures of the plans hitting the towers and then the towers burning, and burning. The black smoke rising into the air, policemen and firefighters going in and out of the buildings, people jumping, the horror unfolds in real life, just in front of us on the big screen.  And then the worst of all – the collapse of the second tower and of the first one, the cloud of smoke erupting, leaving city and people stunned and the landscape eerie and unfamiliar. I was glued to the TV screen, could not move from it and just wanted to wake up from this nightmare. Oh my god was all I could say, again and again and again. I remember the pictures of the mangled metal were once stood so proudly and as a matter of fact two beautiful towers, the frantic search for survivors, and the heart breaking pictures of the missing people desperate family members were hanging, and the stories of loss, of pain, of disbelief. 

September 11, ten years later. In endless war, were so many more young men lost their lives. Regimes changed, dictators fell or were overthrown, and the world is less safe and more fearful than it was. A new world of security checks and orange alerts, of black listed travelers and Guantanamo Bay, of wars, of terror attacks. The mastermind behind September 11^th is dead but the long hand of these heartless terror groups is still everywhere.

What can we be thankful for in a day like that? That through it all, America stood proud and defiant and pulled through. That during the first few days we saw pictures of citizen bringing food and drinks to the search teams. That the spirit, long thought to disappear, showed up in the pride and resilience of the people of New York.

I am thankful we are ten years later and flowers are blooming from the ruins. New life is everywhere and hope came out of that deep pit of despair. I am thankful that with the magnitude of the destruction the toll was not so much higher, as they originally fears.
I remember September 11^th.