It seems like a lifetime ago and just yesterday that tragedy befell my great nation. On that early morning eleven years ago, the phone rang at 4:30 in the morning Hawaii time rousing my husband and I from our beds. On the line was my mother-in-law, frantically telling us that planes had hit the World Trade Center. Thinking that was an accident, I went back to sleep, but my husband got up. He was angry at having been woken up early, “Doesn’t she know what time it is here?”.
A short while later, he came back upstairs and said “You better come look at this, it wasn’t an accident.”. I stood transfixed in front of the TV and watched the replays of the planes hitting the towers over and over again. I was frozen to the spot, crying, as I realized our nation was under attack.
I had two small children at the time and a husband who was active duty military serving in the US-Navy. We lived just outside the main gate of Pearl Harbor and I knew that our lives as we knew it would never be the same.
Eleven years later, many things have changed and while our lives have returned to a semblance or normalcy and on many days we slip into a complacency that we’ve always had, in America we’re safe. On THIS day, the gravity of what happened weighs heavily on my shoulders and is a reminder that on THIS day our nation took a huge loss.
Never forget what we have as Americans, we are fortunate to live in a country where we are free to choose our own religion, our professions, where we live, and most of the time we are safe! We are free to pursue further education and free to make something of ourselves. Never forget the victims of that day and the tragedy that has come since that time. The soldiers who have sacrificed themselves in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Never forget the innocent victims who died that day, people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Never forget the families who were broken that day, never to have the holes filled again.
In remembrance of that day, I have created a Facebook cover photo. Please feel free to use it and share it with your friends.
Click to download
