Still Healing

Today I sat down to have lunch with fellow professionals. 5 women and 1 man. We all work in the child protective services. We were enjoying ourselves talking and getting to know each other a little better.

One of these professionals says that she was born in New York. The one man at the table asks her exactly where and she said Manhattan. He tells her that he is from Brooklyn. Once this is said we all know what the next question is going to be...here are their stories.

The guy from Brooklyn said he was at work and was sent home after the second tower was struck. He said the entire ride home the thing that stuck out to him the most was the deafening silence. In a city where it is never quiet he couldn't hear a bus, the subway, sirens, or voices. He said that as he drove people waved at him. "In NY if you look at someone too long it starts a fight and now people are waving at me." When he got home he went to the roof of his building where he watched the twin towers crumble before his eyes.

The lady from Manhatten stated that she lived about 45 minutes outside the city in Connecticut. The night before her aunt, who worked in the towers, had convinced her to play hookie and meet her aunt at the World Trade Center for lunch. Something told her not to and she called her aunt, who was at work, at about 8:15 to let her aunt know that she wouldn't be making it.

In the days that followed the young man spent hours and hours at ground zero just staring at the spot where the towers stood. Helpless and unsure of what the next step would be. Worried about friends he had working for the NYPD on the pile removing debris.

It was four days before the lady from Manhattan spoke to her family from New York again. Thankfully, everyone survived. She heard from her best friend who was running from one of the towers as it collapsed when she fell. She said she couldn't see behind her, or in front of her, to the left or right. Some man stopped picked her up and told her she wasn't meant to die on that sidewalk on this day.

When they were done telling their stories another lady from England told us of her last memory of New York. Just ten days earlier at dawn she had flown back to the US from England. She said as the plane circled around to land she saw the sun rising over the twin towers and the breathtaking way the sun beams reflected off the towers and in that moment she knew she was home. She said in the days after the attack the Queen of England gave 10 million pounds of her own money to the city of New York. I didn't know that.

And just as I thought, "Wow! How blessed have I just been to hear these amazing stories." The lady sitting right next me tells us her distant cousins was one of the 343 firefighters who died. His name was Stephen "Mr. Ladder 24" Belson of Ladder Company 24. He died when the towers collapsed, he was last known to be on the 44th floor.

So there I was almost 1,100 miles from New York City sitting at a table with three people who were directly effected by 9-11-2001.

They all still love New York and while the loved one of the firefighter and the young man can go and remember the city they love completely. The lady who was set to have lunch with her aunt on 9-11-2001, can't go back to ground zero. She still loves NYC and visits everywhere but there. The idea of what could've been is just too much for her to go to ground zero.