A Day Like No Other…September 11, 2001

  We as humans get over everything, designed to endure, unless of course you lost a loved one on the morning of September 11, 2001.

  For the most part New Yorkers have moved on from that hellish day, along with those that were just too young to  remember. I suppose we should bask in our resiliency, but there are some of us who still smell the smoke and hear the cries.

  Helene, the woman I spent that day with waiting in line to give blood no one would need, passed away at 84.

  I remember how much she comforted me and others having been a social worker all her life.

  We always emailed on 9/11 in remembrance since, lest we forget, as the saying goes.

  I’ve gotten a little remiss myself, not making my usual pilgrimage to the site that now has a food court facing it as if Disney owns it, tourists eating panini where jumpers met their fate.

  It always makes me think of the Gettysburg Battlefield now resembling a theme park selling Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee dolls, although Lee after all that statue pulling, might have been discontinued.

  I’d like to smack those who have fucked so much with our sacred history, but be that as it may, on behalf of Helene wherever she is, no doubt comforting someone in the afterlife, along with myself, will pause when 21 years ago today those planes hit, stealing the lives of many, along with the innocence of those left behind.

Lest we forget. 

Recommended reading…  

Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9/11, Joseph P. Pfeifer, 2021…

The first FDNY Chief  responder reverently remembering the 343 men, including a brother, he lost that day.

SB