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healingmirthThis isn't my usual thing. It's a bit of note-taking type journaling brought on by ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thefridayfive, the rest of which I'm totally going to ignore.
The thing that I remember most clearly, and the thing that I'm sure will stick with me as long as I have memories of the day, is that I was absolutely convinced that someone I knew had just died. It's not a feeling that I'd had before, and it hasn't happened since. God willing, there will never be another tragedy of a scale that causes me to think that.
I was out of town, far from home and far from anyone who I had more than a passing acquaintance with. There was a radio on at the site, probably one of the Dewalt ones that doubles as a battery charger, and I don't remember whether it was broadcasting news or music though my memories of the rest of the weekend suggest country music. I know that I was one of the first of the group to hear the news that something had happened at the World Trade Center.
I had my cell phone with me, and I called my mom. I think I left something of a frantic message on my first call, and then tried again, I'm not sure how much later, so that I could talk to her and make sure that my father wasn't in the city that day, or if he was, that she'd talked to him and that he was okay. My mom assured me that he was nowhere near the danger, and I remember thinking that she didn't seem nearly as concerned about the day's events as I was.
That still left hundreds of people who I'd gone to school with, people I knew from church or other activities, but no one who I knew well enough to call and check upon.
I had a casual acquaintance who worked at the Pentagon, and when I got home, I had to wait until I could look up his last name to check the list of those who died.
A friend and neighbor from high school had a boyfriend, now her husband, whose schedule had changed at the last minute so that he was not at work in one of the towers that morning. He would certainly have been killed if he had been there. In many of my conversations with my mother in the following months, she mentioned the struggles he continued to have with survivor's guilt.
It was only several years later that I learned that someone I knew had in fact died in the twin towers - a classmate from high school, and someone with whom I was never close friends. I hadn't known that he was working in New York, and probably never would have otherwise.
The group of us were staying at a church, sleeping on the floor in a couple of Sunday school classrooms. We didn't have access to a TV, which was typical for that type of trip. Around noon, when later events made clear that that the first plane had not just been a tragic accident, we stopped work, and one of the local staff offered us their space with a TV so that we could watch the coverage. We spent most of the afternoon watching the footage from New York and D.C.
That evening or the day after, I remember walking around the area where we were staying, by myself. That's not an unusual occurrence for me when I'm out of town, and it's possible that I was just exploring or creating some distance from people that I'd been packed in with for several days. It's possible that I was feeling adrift, with strangers in a strange town, and I was looking for something to distract me, or for something to ground me.
I know that we attended a nondenominational service for the community at a church, not the one we were staying at. I know that a day or two after that, we drove into Indianapolis for what was to have been the celebratory night at a conference. I know that those of us who'd flown into Indianapolis for the week spent a lot of time wondering when we were going to be able to get home, and whether we wanted to fly, given the choice. I think that my original flight was scheduled for before air travel resumed, but I flew home later that weekend.
I've been having a weirdly emotional, sort-of-morbid week. I had a dream about my grandfather a couple of days ago, and woke up in tears. I don't usually do much to observe September 11th - last year was the first year I'd watched any of the memorial services - but I figured now was as good a time as any to put words to some memories before they fade any further. I was still keeping a paper journal, nine years ago, and it's possible that some of this is also there. It's probably worth reviewing, to see what I've recorded and what I skipped, but not this week, I don't think.
thefridayfive, the rest of which I'm totally going to ignore. The thing that I remember most clearly, and the thing that I'm sure will stick with me as long as I have memories of the day, is that I was absolutely convinced that someone I knew had just died. It's not a feeling that I'd had before, and it hasn't happened since. God willing, there will never be another tragedy of a scale that causes me to think that.
I was out of town, far from home and far from anyone who I had more than a passing acquaintance with. There was a radio on at the site, probably one of the Dewalt ones that doubles as a battery charger, and I don't remember whether it was broadcasting news or music though my memories of the rest of the weekend suggest country music. I know that I was one of the first of the group to hear the news that something had happened at the World Trade Center.
I had my cell phone with me, and I called my mom. I think I left something of a frantic message on my first call, and then tried again, I'm not sure how much later, so that I could talk to her and make sure that my father wasn't in the city that day, or if he was, that she'd talked to him and that he was okay. My mom assured me that he was nowhere near the danger, and I remember thinking that she didn't seem nearly as concerned about the day's events as I was.
That still left hundreds of people who I'd gone to school with, people I knew from church or other activities, but no one who I knew well enough to call and check upon.
I had a casual acquaintance who worked at the Pentagon, and when I got home, I had to wait until I could look up his last name to check the list of those who died.
A friend and neighbor from high school had a boyfriend, now her husband, whose schedule had changed at the last minute so that he was not at work in one of the towers that morning. He would certainly have been killed if he had been there. In many of my conversations with my mother in the following months, she mentioned the struggles he continued to have with survivor's guilt.
It was only several years later that I learned that someone I knew had in fact died in the twin towers - a classmate from high school, and someone with whom I was never close friends. I hadn't known that he was working in New York, and probably never would have otherwise.
The group of us were staying at a church, sleeping on the floor in a couple of Sunday school classrooms. We didn't have access to a TV, which was typical for that type of trip. Around noon, when later events made clear that that the first plane had not just been a tragic accident, we stopped work, and one of the local staff offered us their space with a TV so that we could watch the coverage. We spent most of the afternoon watching the footage from New York and D.C.
That evening or the day after, I remember walking around the area where we were staying, by myself. That's not an unusual occurrence for me when I'm out of town, and it's possible that I was just exploring or creating some distance from people that I'd been packed in with for several days. It's possible that I was feeling adrift, with strangers in a strange town, and I was looking for something to distract me, or for something to ground me.
I know that we attended a nondenominational service for the community at a church, not the one we were staying at. I know that a day or two after that, we drove into Indianapolis for what was to have been the celebratory night at a conference. I know that those of us who'd flown into Indianapolis for the week spent a lot of time wondering when we were going to be able to get home, and whether we wanted to fly, given the choice. I think that my original flight was scheduled for before air travel resumed, but I flew home later that weekend.
I've been having a weirdly emotional, sort-of-morbid week. I had a dream about my grandfather a couple of days ago, and woke up in tears. I don't usually do much to observe September 11th - last year was the first year I'd watched any of the memorial services - but I figured now was as good a time as any to put words to some memories before they fade any further. I was still keeping a paper journal, nine years ago, and it's possible that some of this is also there. It's probably worth reviewing, to see what I've recorded and what I skipped, but not this week, I don't think.
