23 years ago today.

It has been 23 years.

That’s 276 months. 8,401 days. 201,624 hours. 12,097,440 minutes. 725,846,400 seconds.

Enough for a lifetime of memories.

Memories that some of us can never forget.

Memories that others never got the chance to make.

Memories of all the lives that were shattered on that day.

That day.

That crisp cool Tuesday morning 23 years ago today.

September 11, 2001…

It was a day that dawned with such promise, one of those spectacular fall mornings where the deep blue of the sky and the crispness of the air makes you glad to be alive.

It was a day that ended with images seared in our minds by unimaginable horror.

No-one alive on that day will ever forget what happened that day:

• At 8:46 a.m., AA 11 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
• At 9:03 a.m., UA175 slammed into the South Tower.
• At 9:37 a.m., AA77 crashed into the Pentagon’s west side.
• At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower imploded and fell, raining debris and ash on the city.
• At 10:03 a.m., UA93 crashed into a field in the Pennsylvania countryside.
• And at 10:29 a.m., the North Tower collapsed from the top down. A cloud of ash turned day to night in the narrow streets of lower Manhattan.

In those terrible moments between 8:46 a.m. and 10:29 a.m., nearly 3,000 men, women and children lost their lives to senseless, mindless, blind hatred. So many people — among them folks who lived near me in New Jersey — my neighbors, my colleagues, my friends — wiped from the face of the earth.

The youngest was two. The oldest was 85.

They were police officers, firefighters and other first responders. Housewives, cooks, airline pilots and flight attendants, Wall Street brokers, office workers. They were grandparents, parents, sons and daughters, husbands and wives.

They were innocents.

I can’t help but look back on that day with anger and grief and bitterness. We who survived continue to be so angry at the ruthlessness of the attack. We continue to be overwhelmed with sorrow. For everything we lost. For everything that should have been. For all those whose lives were lost. For all who remained behind, broken and bereft. We continue to be embittered by the senselessness of it all.

Still, I for one have an obligation to put that all aside today, as best I can.

Today, and every year on this day, I must do what I swore I would do, 23 years ago, as I walked through the streets of lower Manhattan, and stared at the posters with the faces of the missing, and at the empty firehouses, and at the twisted steel girders. As I brushed ash from that sacred ground into the only contained I had with me — a film canister that hasn’t left my possession for one minute in those 23 years.

I promised that I would remember.

It’s time, now, today, to keep that promise again this year. It’s time again to remember. It’s time again to open that canister, to touch that dust with my own hands, and to stand witness.

To make sure that I do not forget.

That we do not forget.

That no-one forgets.

That all those lives will never be forgotten.

To say, one more time, this year and every year, as long as I have life and breath, in words and images, NEVER FORGET.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Year 23… never forget…,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 11 Sep 2024).