WRITING ABOUT THAT DAY

`````Given the date, I want to write about "the event." When I heard about it, I was just getting off my shift. I had one more working day to go and then I was due to start my vacation leave. My friend had booked a suite downtown, as a person he'd met on a diving expedition was going to come here. He was a cryptozoologist from Europe who was interested in sasquatch. So, we were going to give him the full meal deal before he went off into the hinterland to do his thing. When I heard the news and saw that the air-space was being closed and planes grounded, I said to my friend "Don't count on his getting out here." He wasn't due to arrive for a couple of days, but in my heart I knew that this was going to be bad. I went home and watched the replay of the second tower falling.

`````I didn't sleep that entire day, because like everybody else, I was transfixed by the events and the horror of how many were missing. They didn't know at the time. There were reports of 50,000 people working in each building, so the numbers could have been devastating. At some point, the news stations stopped playing the footage of those falling to their deaths.

`````I have always loved that city and wanted to go there. I've written previously of how, as a kid in high-school, I had one of the weekend New York papers mailed to my house. In an ideal world, that's where I would have gone to university. I had a city map of New York in my room as a teen in Junior High. I knew where Lexington was and 5th Avenue. I knew the names of the city buroughs.

`````These were ordinary people, just going on about their lives. They'd begrudgingly dragged their butts out of bed to get to some office job that they might not be crazy about. They weren't soldiers who had taken on some degree of risk to go fight in a foreign country. It was absolutely uncalled for. Who died had nothing to do with beliefs, as the targets were random. There were Muslims who worked in those buildings and were slaughtered on that day. It was about the blindness of ideology and where a lack of understanding takes a person.

`````What I was most moved by was the story of those who obviously knew that they might die on that day, yet willingly took a risk in order to save the life of another. There were stories of regular people who did just that. They would help the injured down the stairs, which impeded their own ability to escape. So many fire staff died on that day. The prospect of having to climb those stairs with all of that gear on them, must have seemed so daunting. I've had to put on fire gear before; the SCBA with the harness isn't light. You have to control your breathing, as you only have a specific amount of air before you have to leave again. To think of having to do it going up stairs...I cannot imagine it. When they passed by the civilians who had severe lacerations and burns, they knew what was awaiting them up there.

`````We checked into the hotel for our vacation, and they asked if we'd give up our suite, as there were so many stranded travellers. We gladly did so and took a smaller room instead. By the way, kudos to the Delta Hotel. There were reports coming out on the news of hotels across the continent increasing their rates for people forced to stay. The Delta bent over backwards and had cots made available at no cost. They had extra food laid out in the lobby and such. Every so often, we'd spot a new "plane-load" of British Airways staff or others coming into the hotel, looking tired as they carried their hand luggage.

`````The hotel has a large, international conference room with a huge screen and circular seating. When the televized minute of silence and ceremony was being held, they had made the room available. I attended it and there were men in suits, obviously from all parts of the United States, with their heads bowed and very pained by the moment. They had probably been in town on business when the incident took place and were now stuck here. It must have been difficult for them to be away from their families at such a time.

`````I doubt this nonsense is going to stop anytime soon. But, I still think of those people who died and those who were so brave that day. I hunted out something which I wrote at work on my last shift. It took about five minutes, but I wrote it when they were still showing images of the burning piles and the anguished loved ones waving the missing posters.
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Snow came down this summer,
And midnight seized the day
Calm begat brute thunder
Then concrete gave away.
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As hell fell out of Heaven
Grey ghosts in shadows walked.
On this September 11
The innocent were stalked.
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Yet heros rose amongst them
Took battle with their fear
Though sent adrift in Dante's Den
They entered with their gear.o