As I drove home from work this morning, I recalled this day ten years ago. I not only remember, I still feel that day.
I confess: when Ray was on the road, I usually slept on the couch in the living room....and I usually had the television on. Seems I sleep better in a wash of sound at times. The phone rang. It was kind of early, but I instinctively responded to the call. Ray often called when he was 'between things', when he stopped to fuel or was going through a port, when he was waiting to unload. I knew he had offloaded the components for a steel building at a spot somewhere in the Northeast the previous day and would be on the way home or to pick up a backhaul to bring him homeward. He, on the other hand, knew that it was my mom's 75th birthday and that I would be spending the afternoon with her to celebrate. That was not the reason for this early call, however.
I was a tad groggy answering the phone, but when he said that "some fool in a plane hit the Twin Towers", I responded in the typical "Good Grief" sort of way, not thinking at that moment what it actually meant. I, like most others at that point, thought it was an accident. I didn't have my contact lenses in yet and, therefore, wasn't able to actually see what was on television, though I knew it was news coverage. As we chatted a few more moments, I regained consciousness somewhat. Ray then said, "Oh, shit! Another one just hit the other tower!" It became hideously obvious that this was no accident at all. There came a gut reaction of horror, shock and sadness.
Ray had stopped at a fuel oasis just as he had come out of Elizabeth, NJ. He had put off coming through that area until morning as it is notoriously dangerous in that city. As he fueled, history was being made. He said that all the trucks and passenger vehicles had now been stopped there by National Guard personnel (remember when they took care of stuff here in THIS country?) and he didn't know how long they would have to stay.
As we talked, he told of the smoke rolling and the horrors and then.....the first building coming down. Then he said that the National Guardsman had returned and he had to go. He said he couldn't call anymore for a while. And he was gone. And it was very quiet here. The waves of shock were rolling across the country and had come to my little home in Clark County, South Dakota.
I tried to do the things that I usually did when morning came and a day started, but I don't remember one single thing about that time anymore....except the words and pictures coming on the television.
Ray did call again rather shortly after. He said they had all been told, specifically, that, if they had a place to go, they better do just that...GO! He headed for Pittsburgh because he felt that would probably be the place he would be getting his next load anyway. Little did we know......their share of the horror was just taking place.
I felt that at least I knew he was OUT OF THAT PLACE!
Somehow the time passed, I headed for Watertown to see my mom, thinking, "How dare they!!?? They desecrated my mom's birthday!" That rather trivial thought only touched lightly at the deep anger that so many of us found mingling with our sadness.
I remember the day John Kennedy died...I was just a kid in school, but I can still 'feel' the chair I was sitting on when the news came over the PA system during music class. This day, September 11, 2001, was now one of those rare "I won't ever forget" days, as well.
I join all those around the world who shared the shock and horror of those moments and the anger and the grief and the loss that followed. At some point, the philosophizing stops as the reasons don't work.
No...I don't know and I can't comprehend.....but I recall -- with reverence.
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