This morning as I sleepily flipped open my laptop to check the regulars (Facebook, Pinterest, and e-mail), I was updated and reminded by Yahoo! News of what today is: 9/11, the tragic event of the twin towers’ fall. Instead of pinning a new wedding cake idea, today I actually stayed on my home page. Only half dressed and unready for the day, I clicked on a link to the live stream of the 9/11 Memorial Service going on at Ground Zero, NYC.
For an hour and a half, I was caught up listening to names being read by uncles, daughters, brother-in-laws, mothers, and friends of people that died that day. Each reader said about 10 names before they arrived at the one of their lost relative or friend. They honored that person with a small speech before another set of readers came up to continue down the list of 2,977 victims.
Two things struck me the most about the people standing at the podium. One, almost every single one cried. The emotion of this day, even 11 years later, is no less prominent. The people that were lost have never been forgotten. Secondly, there was such a difference in age, background, and relation between the readers. There were a few children who had lost their mom or their dad.
Some still recognized their loss without remembering or even having met their parent. There were also grandmothers and grandfathers remembering their children and grandchildren. There were people with a strong New York accent, and there were people who were struggling with the English names through a Spanish, German, or Swedish accent. Each individual was so different from the next.
The diversity of the readers reflected for me the massive and diverse impact this tragedy had on the American people as a whole. Although it was not a homogenous group of people based on background and age, they are all grouped together by the fact that they died for being in America. Even the non-Americans – which included 372 foreign nationals – sacrificed their lives just for being in this country. Attacked because of hate against our country, these people are all united as Americans.
As I watched the Memorial Service this morning, I saw people different than night and day gathered together to console each other and remember the loved ones that they lost. The tragedy of 9/11 brought our nation together as one 11 years ago, and it continues to do so even today. A proud country, a united country, we will never forget those lost on that day and will continue to preserve their memory under the flag of the country these people died for: the United States of America.
Sing, Sing, Sing 