Remembering...

I've been watching the tributes to those that lost their lives on September 11, 2001. It hardly seems like it has been 7 years.......
I was two hours into my school day that fateful Tuesday morning. I'll never forget that one of our third grade teachers stuck her head in my classroom door telling me a plane had hit a building in New York. Since I didn't have my classroom TV on, and didn't want to interrupt my students, leaving my kids with my assistant I went to the office to see on the small office TV what was going on. Just as I got there the principal said, "the Pentagon has just been hit!" I stared at the TV stunned by the news reports. What was going on? Were we at war? I was confused with everything that was happening. My mind was numb and I couldn't get my mind around what was going on. I went back to my classroom in a daze and told my teaching assistant what I'd seen. We were in disbelief.
We did end up turning the TV on and off throughout the day. I couldn't take my eyes off the horrible replays of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center. One of my dear special students looked at me and said, "let's pray". Yes, I taught in a public school but that day it did not matter. She requested and we prayed. Her sweet young voice reaching up to her Heavenly Father...." Dear God help those people." I cried.
This was a mere 10 months since I had lost my husband. Our school librarian had recently died from cancer. My favorite race car driver had died in February of that year. My husband's aunt had died a month earlier. Now this catastrophic, life changing incident. I was numb....both for the people that had lost their lives on 9/11 as well as their families....I knew all to well what it felt like.
There are a lot of emotions and memories tied up in the tragedy that occurred on that day so many years ago....probably because of where I was in my own life at that time.
So sad. So tragic. So unforgettable. Yet, from the ashes of that day come the equally unforgettable acts of courage, the strong will to go on, the fierce determination that this would not be allowed to happen again. Average Americans died that day---but they are not forgotten, nor will they ever be. The memory of that fateful day is forever stamped on the hearts of America.
Not everyone agrees with George Bush or is pleased with all his decisions, but I believe that he will go down in history as a President who kept us safe on his watch. He has been vigilant so that we have not had another terror attack on our own soil......and for that I say a heart felt thank you.