In Remembrance

Today is the 8th anniversary of the darkest day in my lifetime and I was just an observer. We had started our homeschooling day like any other Tuesday morning. The television and radio were both off because it was school time, I don’t even answer the house phone during school but, on this morning at approximately 9:06am my mother-in-law called my cell phone. She never calls during school, so I figured it must be important and I answered. She asked if I was watching…watching what? We’re doing school. “Turn on the television, we’ve been attacked.” I turned on the TV, it was still on NBC from the news the night before. I sat stunned at what I was hearing and seeing, America had been attacked. How could that be? President Bush was just down the road at Booker Elementary School reading to the children? No one attacks us, on our soil! I hung up the phone, called my boys into the living room, they were in 2nd and 4th grades at the time, and told them we had to pray for our country.

We prayed for a while. For the people in New York, for President Bush and our other elected leaders, for our country. Then I told them school was canceled for today and that they could go play. I stayed in front of the TV for hours crying, praying and crying out to God. I had to go to work in the afternoon, though most of my student’s canceled their lessons, no problem, we sat by the radio and tiny TV in the music store hungry for information. It was a long day, a long week. One I hope we never forget.

Our nation was changed that day. We hadn’t been attacked on our own soil since Pearl Harbor. This time they attacked New York, Washington, DC and a plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field, thanks to the heroics of the passengers on board. They attacked every American that day. If you didn’t feel it, you don’t deserve to call yourself an American.

We, as a nation had grown complacent or haughty, I’m still not sure which it is. We were not prepared for attacks on our own soil. We didn’t think it could happen to us. Well, it can and it did. Nearly 3,000 innocent people lost their lives because our guard was down. CNN has a beautiful tribute page to all of the victims. Many people just “doing their job” were killed because of where they worked. Lots of firefighters, police, and emergency workers who heroically run into the devastation to help others, were killed when the towers collapsed.

We, as Americans must make sure they and the countless others who have died defending the freedoms many Americans take for granted, did not die in vain. On this day of remembrance, lay down your political beliefs, think back and remember how proud you were to be an American on 9/12/01. We were all flying flags, wearing red, white and blue shirts and singing “God Bless America”. Take time to remember what America stands for. Read the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, let the words of those documents take hold in your soul, know who you are as an American and unite not as Republicans, Democrats or Independents but as Americans who support what the founding fathers planned for this nation to be. Presidents and leaders come and go but these documents, our foundation as a nation, have withstood the test of time.

We, the people of America, can bring our country back to what it was created to be. It will take time and a lot of hard work but we can do it. Never forget.

Please share your memories of 9/11/01 with me by leaving a comment.