Too Late: Memories of 9-11

So I keep happening upon the contest going on over at the Barking Moonbat
site.

I've read the entries, people who remember everything vividly and with
startling clarity. A couple of them send chills -- like the one with the dog
wanting out.

I haven't entered the contest, as much as I secretly want to, because I
*don't* have that clarity of mind where 9-11 is concerned. Don't get me
wrong, I have memories so sharp and crisp they'll never fade, as long as I
live. Memories that built over time, even. Things that didn't become clear
to me until days later when more information was out or when something was
viewed for the 1,001st time and suddenly everything changed.

The personal impact for me can be summed up in a series of shifts. Shifts
within me, my thought processes, my beliefs. I think that's the day my
politics started leaning right in earnest. Or maybe more accurately that's
just the day I realized it had happened.

I already knew what death was about -- my infant son had died on July 10,
1999, when he was 76 days old. I knew all about how precious life was at
that moment because of Sam's death, and because of Andy's birth (my first
grandchild, born 13 days after Sam, to my then 18 year old eldest child and
her husband). I appreciated my children all the more because of what I'd
lost, my family had become more dear to me -- something I'd honestly never
dreamed possible.

My family is in many of those captured moments, frozen in my memories of
that day. It was early morning when it began.

Anna and Peter and Andy were in Georgia. Maggie was in Indiana. Amanda was
at the middle school, and Missy was freshly off on the bus on her way to
first grade at the elementary school. My mom was home, my dad was at work.
So was Darin -- but since he was homebased, it hardly mattered, he was right
there, kitty-cornered across the room from me.

As usual, the news was on. I'd just sat down with my coffee. I had just
signed into "work" -- I work online, for an internet gaming company -- and
the television was in the same room, actually behind me. (It was our old
house; we had three desks in a very small dining room so quarters were
cramped!)

I was chatting with Janie, a fellow GM at the time, and listening to the
news --when suddenly the news was interrupted.

With the news.

~~~~~

You've heard the saying "my heart dropped?" I'd heard it. Even experienced
it a few times previously. Like the morning Sam died. He's inextricably
linked to that day in my mind, even though he'd been dead two years (at the
time). Coming up on five years now.

Anyhow.

So I turned around to watch the interruption, on that morning in September.
And my heart dropped.

A few minutes later, I watched the live footage of the second plane, the one
that happened just once in reality but a million times in upcoming days. The
same sickening sense of dread over and over and over, again and again and
again, till the moment became seared forever in our minds' eyes. Even now I
can play that footage in my mind. Not because I want to. Because it just
happens. Sometimes when I am least prepared for it.

The moment becomes so much more important a few days later. A few days later
when an uncharacteristically quiet Janie tells me something she didn't know
that day, but which she knew now. Something she didn't want anyone to know,
and which she had triple verified, because it surely had to be a mistake.

A few days too late. When Janie tells me that her niece was on that second
plane. Lisa Frost died on Flight 175, the second plane to crash. The scene
frozen in our collective minds. The scene Janie and I had watched unfold,
separated by distance (Janie in southern California, me in SW Ohio) and yet
shared thru the airwaves and discussed thru the computer screens, in real
time. Real time that was too late.

The bitter irony takes a moment to sink in, that first time, the cruel
injustice of the blow, the absolute horror that is her Aunt sharing that
moment in time with her and not knowing until it was too late. And even if
she'd known at the time it was still: too late.

A moment not unlike the moment when it hit me, in the gut, and in my heart
which was in my throat at that very instant, that Sam was dead in my arms,
that he wasn't going to open his eyes and give me that sly grin of his, the
one he'd just started learning. Too late.

I don't remember how it came about. Somehow, in some order I no longer
recall (does it even matter?) I was on the phone with Anna that day. My mom,
as well. Maggie, even.

I left our house and drove to the elementary school when the Pentagon crash
was just a rumor. I sat in a long line of cars waiting entry to the parking
lot, and I went inside and showed my ID (the first and only time in my life
they haven't said "hi, Kathleen" like they normally would have) and went
down the hall to the classroom to pick up my daughter.

I hugged her teacher in the doorway when she cried as she told me that her
daughter was in a plane, homeward bound from France, and that they hadn't
been able to get in touch with her, and she was so frightened, had I heard
anything, anything at all that might let her know her daughter was safe?

She was lucky. It wasn't too late for her. Not her turn.

If only Sam had had that luck. If only it hadn't been his time and whatever
it is that actually triggers SIDS hadn't fired that day. Too late.

We next drove to the middle school, where they were already lining up the
buses and organizing an early dismissal. Air sirens were by now sounding --
we're in an Air Force town, Wright-Patterson was already on full alert.

I inhaled deeply and told the gentleman who stopped several of us on the
lawn of the school that I, unlike other parents that day, would not insist
that they comb the lines of students already assembling to board the buses
to find my daughter. I would go home and wait for her.

I remember he thanked me, with tears in his eyes. He told me his son was
boarding a bus at Five Points, from where I'd just fetched Missy, who was
clinging to my hand and trembling. "We heard that planes were crashing into
buildings, mommy. We heard that the buildings were burning. Why, mommy?"

He wanted to get his son. Instead he was gently thanking me for not getting
my daughter.

I went home, and we waited. Nearly an hour and a half later, Amanda finally
walked in the door, and collapsed into my arms, sobbing. "Mommy, I was so
scared. Look at me, I can't stop shaking." She hadn't called me mommy in two
years, I'd been "mom" so long I'd forgotten there was a time I was still
mommy to two of them.

Three, actually. She quit calling me mommy shortly after Sammy died. We all
grew up a little that day.

We all grew up more on 9-11.

More memories frozen from that day: the moment when Darin called his
parents. When he talked to his mom, and we learned that Corby, his stepdad,
had taken the plane to refuel before the airways were shut down. Corby, the
last boy scout, who'd been on standby to fly a heart patient to a Seattle
hospital if a donor suddenly became available. God knows, on this day,
anything would be possible. Corby flew to fill up, so that if a heart
arrived in the midst of all the pandemonium we were expecting (dreading?), a
person would have a second chance.

Too late, we learned that even though the airways had not been shut down
when Corby left the ground, and even though he didn't need to file paperwork
because it was a from an unsecured landing strip to another, and was in
contact with an airport who didn't know any more about what has going on
than he did ... too late we learned that this would be used to vilify a good
man, a patriot who wanted nothing more than to help. We didn't know this
then.

Other things happened, as a result of that day. More casualties.

Amanda would visit her father and his wife only one time after that day, and
would then refuse to return. Her "stepmother" asked Amanda, "so, if
something had happened HERE that day, where do you think you would have
gone?" When Amanda tearfully replied "to Heaven, I hope" she was told no,
she would not be going to Heaven, because she is a sinner.

Amanda wrote her father an email breaking off her relationship with him. She
asked me to help her find bible quotes. Things she wanted to say to him.

Another casualty of 9-11.

At some point late in the day, there was a tremendous *boom* and the
neighborhood shook. It happened again a split second after the first. We ran
from our homes, all of us, people pouring from houses up and down the
street. We were startled, shell shocked, frightened.

Rumors.

A plane crashed into the VA hospital in Dayton. A bomb had gone off at the
VA hospital. A bomb had gone off at Wright-Patt. Later we learned it was
nothing more than a pair of sonic booms, caused when a couple of planes
broke the sound barrier. I don't remember when we learned, as strange as it
sounds now, I don't think we learned it until the next day.

Another memory I have, but can't pinpoint on a timeline, was when we heard
they didn't need blood donors. The initial thought flashed through my brain:
wow, people are really coming forward. The reality a few moments later, when
Darin gently explained that there weren't enough people who survived to
actually need the blood. (I remember how stupid I felt at that moment.
Stupid for being so naive as to not realize that. And profoundly sad.)

I remember in the wee hours of July 10, 1999, thinking "God, Sam will you
please go to sleep, I have to be up early in the morning." I remember three
days later when that thought came back to me. Too late to take the words
back.

It came to me again on 9-11. As I sat there that day wondering how many of
those people had thought "God please" thoughts which now would haunt them.

As I listened to cell phone calls made in the final moments. As I watched
the footage on the television and in my mind.

September 11, 2001. The day that terrorism taught a lesson.