I remember. I was in the Meijer grocery store on Saginaw Highway in Lansing, Michigan on September 11, 2001. I was stocking up on groceries in preparation for the visit by a friend due to arrive from California the next day. I was headed from the back of the store toward the checkout when I saw a group of shoppers crowded in front of the bank of televisions in the electronics department. In between the people I glimpsed the unbelievable sight of the towers of the World Trade Center on fire. I overheard someone say that they’d also heard that Washington DC was under attack. Having three sisters, all of whom lived and/or worked in Washington DC at that time, I immediately dialed my sister Sandy’s phone. Each DC number I dialed yielded the same result–all circuits were busy and I couldn’t get through. Rather than panic, I checked out and headed home with my groceries, listening to the radio on the way.
It’s odd how during surreal times like that we still manage to walk through our day. When I got home, I had to bring the groceries into the house and put frozen foods in the freezer. Then I sat on the sofa and watched in stunned shock as the news replayed over and over again the planes hitting the Towers and as they crumbled to the ground. I was still sitting there when my children got home from school. I hugged each of them to me as I tried to explain what was happening (even though I didn’t fully understand myself.) I had eventually made contact with my sisters and learned that no one had come to any harm.
We mark these “where were you when” events over the course of our lives–I was in my classroom in Sister Thomas Marie’s first grade at Saint Mary’s Campus School in South Bend Indiana when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It was my first national tragedy. I remember the spring and summer of 1968 when Martin Luther King Junior and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. It’s not just the tragedies that we mark–I also remember where I was when the first person stepped onto the surface of the moon. We mark personal events as well. I was hosting a Memorial Day picnic in 1995 when I received the phone call from my sister Michaele telling me that my mother had died. Then a year ago she called to tell me I needed to “come quickly” to my father’s hospital room the morning he died. I arrived just after his spirit had left his body.The anniversary of his passing is coming up in a few weeks.
I am grateful for the opportunity that these anniversaries offer us to remember. Sometimes the memories are painful, sometimes happy, almost always poignant. I did not suffer a personal loss on September 11, 2001, but experienced it as a communal loss, a national loss. Watching some of today’s tributes–even the national anthem at the football games and tennis match today–were moving. I found myself wiping tears away more than once. There’s a line from a hymn that we sang at my father’s funeral mass (we sang it on many other occasions, but that time was most recent and significant to me): “We remember, we celebrate, we believe.” On anniversaries like 9/11 we definitely remember. And we celebrate, in one sense, the resilience that so many people have demonstrated in the days, weeks, months and years since the tragedy. We believe: people from various faith traditions look forward to the opportunity to reconnect with those who have passed beyond the physical plane.
Today I remember, I celebrate. I believe. And I am grateful.
