Bruce Fielding

5 yrs

I was home. A friend IM'd me to turn on the news, any channel she said, right now.

I sat transfixed as morons tried to convince themselves that the massive hole in the side of the WTC was an accident. I saw live as the second plane hit and felt a previously unexperienced level of rage fill my soul.

I went upstairs and watched it all with my wife as our youngest toddled around blithely unaware that his world had just changed.

I remember pointing out the slightly sagging corner of the roof of the second tower. I remember crying, knowing it was going to come down and thinking I was about to watch tens of thousands die in an instant...had they hit the towers even 45 minutes later than they did, I probably would have been right.

I remember rage turning to grief, holding onto my wife, unwiped tears soaking one another, trying not to let our son feel our horror.

I remember taking the flag off of our house and attaching it to the bed of my little Ranger before I left for work.

I remember crying while I drove, tears of rage now, and holding a raised fist out of the window to other drivers also flying their house flags from their trucks.

I remember working in a daze shared by all. Going home after 10 hours, still dazed, still furious, still heartbroken.

I rember consuming every available moment of news, coverage that didn't stop for three days, and the endless stream of horror, loss, and death that it delivered.

I remember, too, that one day, the 12th, when we all came together for maybe 72 hours, before the media remembered their mission and started tearing us all back apart.

I know they call today Patriots Day but it ought to be tomorrow, September 12th, that brief shining moment when we remembered we were all one people, one nation, with a shared grief, a shared shock and fury, and a singular dream equaled nowhere else on earth.

#9/11 #911 #neveragain