I feel like for you as a fellow (now transplanted to DC) New Yorker. I remember the construction work when I was a little kid. My dad supervised survey crews for the City and my uncle and his company worked on some of the ornamental metalwork (not the structure, but the stuff inside that looked nice). It makes me very sad to realize that I was in NYC and looking at the towers from afar on 9/10/01 and I had no idea, as did anyone, how the world could change in just a few hours.
I give thanks that my own family, friends and acquaintances are all still here. Everyone I knew made it alive. I got to watch the Pentagon burning in person - I just remember nasty black smoke and an awful smell and an otherwise beautiful day with nice, bright blue skies. But I also remember that people were uncommonly kind to each other as they tried to leave the city. There was a lady outside a metro station who was pregnant and not looking good. Absolutely everyone stopped to check on her and ask her if she needed help - paramedics had just come and she was alright. She had walked too far and was just a little overheated. People can be kind, even when they are scared, sometimes (paradoxically) especially when they are scared.
My friend, who worked for a trading company in Houston, was not so lucky. Many of his colleagues in the NY office did not make it out alive.
I was in NYC last spring when they had the tribute in light. A lady in a coffee shop in Little Italy told me how her daughter worked in the WTC and she wanted to look for her, but all these dazed and dusty and hurt people wandered into her shop and she couldn't just leave them. It turned out her daughter was fine and came along later. The lady said business was pretty much non-existant right after and she wanted to work, so she went down and helped feed and encourage the rescue workers.
I tend to believe that God, who has far more mercy than we can ever comprehend in our puny and inadequate little human minds, has shown these poor souls to a place of comfort.
Originally posted by alice:
Dear Annie,
My daughter and I were watching a documentary of 9/11 yesterday, with tears in our eyes. I did think of those poor people, and prayed for their souls, and thought about how some may not have been ready for death. Are any of us really? Yet, that is why we have to be vigilant about our spiritual lives.
Ofcourse, the Twin Towers deaths felt very close to us. I grew up in NYC and remember those towers going up in the 70's, I remember the first time I had dinner at the restaurant on the top floor shortly after they opened, and the many events after which I have attended on that top floor. (Although the last one a few years ago, practically had me kicking and screaming, because I now have acrophobia, so I made sure that I centered myself in the room and didn't approach the windows). The height was incredible. You felt as if you were in an airplane. That is why, when I think of those poor souls (a few of which I knew, and others which were friends and acquaintances of friends and acqaintances of mine), having no way to save themselves from that unforgiving and unnatural height, which I knew all too well....need I say more...Lord God, save us from a tragic death!
Have mercy on all the souls whose lives were tragically ended on that day, forgiving their every sin and transgression, for you are a good and loving God...Amen.
