Was it the Right Thing To Do?

Today was a day I will likely never forget, but would very much like to. It's the 8 year anniversary of 9/11/01, and no matter how hard I try, I can't forget it. At school, we were sent a link to a children's video lesson on 9/11. I didn't want to show it, but thought I would. When the kids started talking excitedly about getting to watch the Towers fall, I decided not to show it because they were babies when it happened, and I didn't think they would understand it any better if they watched a cartoon about it. Plus, it is still painful for me....

It isn't just because of what happened on that day, but it's also because of the aftermath of that day that we are all still living through. On a more personal note, I am also deeply affected by the loss of the father I knew before 9/11.

My dad has lived in Virginia since 1976, but he will always be a New Yorker. When the planes hit the WTC, it was he who called my sister as she drove B and I to the airport to catch our plane back into DC. He was about to begin a new job as a financial advisor for a company that was based in the WTC, but once the attacks happened, he had ample time to sit and drink in his depression about the loss of a part of his hometown, and he also had ample time to sit and watch the news constantly replay the footage of the planes crashing into the buildings and the buildings' subsequent collapse, with a bottle of vodka at his side.

All of the drinking worsened his illness, chronic pancreatitis. He drank to the point where he began having delusions and then he had seizures. He eventually went to the hospital, and was in a coma for a week from his pancreas essentially consuming his own blood. He stayed in the hospital for 6 months, and even though he survived, I lost the dad I knew, and had to get to know the new man that only mimicked my father. Although he had pancreatitis for years before 9/11, I know that that day affected him deeply and profoundly. He used to tell me, "your brother and I made models that went into the lobby of that building. When I was younger, I looked at the Towers and truly believed that those buildings stood for our great country."

In 2000, I had to train for my new position as a tech support analyst for a financial data company in Hoboken, NJ. The PATH station I went to was the same station where I saw workers from the WTC pour on and off the trains during rush hour. At sunset, looking across the river from Hoboken, I could see the Towers, which were otherwise unattractive, glow purple in the dusk. To me, it was beautiful. Less than a year later, the Towers were gone, and I am still haunted by images of the men and women coming off the train to go home after a long day at work. I wonder who survived, and I know that train will never run again, as it was crushed when the buildings fell. On 9/11 I silently cried as I thought of the analysts who worked in this buildings that I helped. I still have no idea who lived and who died. I'd like to think that many of them escaped, and I'll hold onto that hope.

In the year after that day, New Yorkers were still filing obituaries of all of the firemen who sacrificed their lives as they rushed into the Towers. I went to visit my family in Long Island, and I was shocked by the pages of obituaries. To me it was shocking. To them, I am sure it was just another day. The thought that those men ran in when everyone else ran out still sends chills throughout my body.

Every year I move on, and yet on this day I am forced to remember the pain of those times. Maybe I should have chosen to show the video. Maybe I need to detach myself from it more, and maybe it wasn't the right thing to do. Or maybe it's okay, and I am allowed to not want my kids to relive something they know nothing of, and hopefully never will.