Remembering 9/11

Yesterday it was 10 years since 9/11, as you probably all know. The day still fascinates me, even after 10 years. I watched the memorial at Ground Zero live on TV, because I felt like I had to. The same way I had felt like I had to watch the drama of the twin towers unfold on TV 10 years earlier. The reading of the names of all those people who lost their lives on that fateful day was impressive. This was not just buildings falling down - although that's all you ever get to see - this was peoples' lives that had ended or were forever changed. Yesterday I couldn't help but think back to all the astonishment of that day 10 years earlier. And before I went to bed, I wrote this down in my diary, of which I want to share a slightly altered version with you.

Who knew we'd be here 10 years ago? Who would have believed then how fast 10 years can go? Especially because this particular day 10 years ago, the world seemed to stop for a moment and the day seemed to never end. And if that day could seem to last forever, how can 10 years have come and gone so quickly? I find it amazing how so many millions of people still know exactly where they were 10 years ago, when they learned about 9/11. Before it was even known as 9/11. Before we knew that planes could bring down buildings and start wars. Before we fully understood what was unfolding right before our eyes and what it would lead to. How much the impact of that first plane hitting the World Trade Centre would still be felt today. I remember where I was. I was 14-years-old, just back from school, sitting upstairs behind the computer when my sister Renske called me from downstairs. (We had an inhouse phone line). That there was something on TV I should see, because a small plane had hit one of the WTC towers. I can't say for sure I saw the second plane go into the second tower live because of all the repeats I've seen of that famous footage since. I think I did though, because I remember vaguely saying something like 'see, they do have footage of the plane hitting the tower'. It might just be something my mind fabricated later too though. But what I do remember for sure is that I didn't want to go to bed that night, because I wanted to know more. I remember being transfixed by all the images on TV - the repeats of the towers falling and the shocked and stunned faces of the onlookers - not wanting to miss anything of what was happening. I remember this sense of witnessing something major in history, while at the same time not being able to quite grasp the full extent of it all. It was simply too big, too surreal, too unbelievable still at that point.

I don't think I even realised at that point that I had watched thousands of people die live on TV when the planes hit and the towers collapsed. Not even when they showed the people jumping out of the building, because you never saw them land. You only saw them forever falling. That realisation probably only came a few years later, when I first saw this documentary by two French brothers, who had set out to make a documentary on a rookie firefighter in New York, but ended up right in the middle of the World Trade Center tragedy. One of the brothers is inside the tower that was first hit, and on the film you can hear the sound of people crashing to the ground. You can hear them land. I've seen that documentary 3 or 4 times since, but I never get used to that sound of people falling. Which I think is a good thing. Because that's the moment it really hit home for me that it wasn't just buildings falling and the New York skyline changing. It was, above all, a life-ending and life-changing event.

And now 10 years have passed and the world is such a different place because and despite of that one blue-sky Tuesday morning in 2001. I still find myself transfixed by all the images of that day. Still want to hear the stories and the human side of it all, beyond the towers falling. The names of the lives lost, the memories of those who live on. Because I can't help but wonder if we would still be hearing the names and stories after 10 years had the towers not collapsed. And because the world changed so profoundly with what happened that particular day and in name of that day since, that I can't help but remind myself it was not just towers falling, it was people too. And that's worth remembering.