As you can imagine, I’m always on line researching and reading all things related to traveling with your kids. In my research just now for an Examiner article, I came across an article from Budget Travel.com on 15 places every kid should see. Number 2 on the list was Ground Zero in New York. Honestly, I felt like my heart stopped when I saw that suggestion but worse yet, it felt like someone punched me in as I read “The nearby Tribute-WTC Center exhibits crushed firefighter helmets and other recovered items.” But I knew that I was still breathing because if I wasn’t I wouldn’t have been able to cry. I am crying at this moment as I write. I felt compelled to get on and write this post as I sit in the midst of my heartache otherwise how I feel will not truly be conveyed at another time. And I feel that if I write through this I can get out of this place that the suggestion took me to. Unfortunately, my thoughts aren’t very organized right now, they are seriously all over the place, therefore my writing will be all over the place. I apologize for that. I’m not in a place where I can self edit and I will not return to this post to edit outside of spelling mistakes.
First off, you’re probably wondering why I am so upset. Well, I worked at 1WTC for Cantor Fitzgerald for 3 years after graduating college in ’96. I left my job as an institutional broker for grad school. Many of my friends that I made on the job working 12 hour days, 5 days a week, stayed behind continuing their careers, one of my closest friends in particular. She had just come out to visit me in Los Angeles where I was living at the time for a week a couple of months before that fateful day. When September 11th happened, I was still working in the securities business, so I was awake as I listened to the events on my way into work. When I got to my office and saw the images on the t.v. I had to leave. When I got to a girlfriend’s house to sit with her, it was before the anyone thought that the towers would fall but I knew that I’d need company because I couldn’t get my friend or anyone else in NY for that matter on the phone. All of my family lives in NY so I didn’t know what was going on or what to expect. It was the one time in my life where I felt the most alone in the world and probably made the mental note to move back East and be within driving distance from my family. When the towers fell, I sat looking at the screen in shock and then just started screaming and kept screaming. Even til this day, 8 years later, I know that I haven’t dealt with this. The pain is still there, dormant, suppressed. Every year on 9/11, I take a personal hiatus from television. I listen to no radio, I read no papers. I guess that’s not dealing with it.
Now to the Budget article. I was truly interested in reading where they thought EVERY kid should visit, prepared to make a mental note for my own. I’m always open to suggestions and new ideas. Reading that the “museum” has items retrieved from the towers has plummeted my imagination into overdrive. All I can think about is going there to face whatever demon I need to face and seeing a familiar item of my friend’s or my best friend’s ex-boyfriend (or an item of anyone else I knew from the job for that matter) and absolutely losing it. I know I would. I’m not even there and I feel like I’m losing it. What would I explain to my kids? Should I explain anything to them? I think that would be a conversation that I will leave for my husband. I think that would also be a trip I’d leave for him as well if he felt so inclined to take them. I understand it’s a part of our history now but that day isn’t just “history” for many people who lost loved ones. It’s a bad bad dream, one never to be forgotten. It’s a hole, like the one in the ground that marks the place of hate and destruction, that can never truly be filled. I think what also stung me was that the “museum” was charging. My thoughts on that are why should anyone make any money off of the death of our friends and family.
I’ll get through this moment. I have to leave the post in this place, not really wrapped up like I usually like to do because that would be disingenuous to my feelings right now.
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