Ten years?! It hardly seems possibe that an entire decade has passed since that sunny, Tuesday morning turned into confusion and heartbreak. It seems to me, however, that time will race by much faster when we are able to kiss and hug our loved ones, see their smiles, hear their voices, watch our children growing up or our parents growing older. I can only imagine how that same decade must have been more like a slow, devastating, and painful crawl for those that have had to live it without their very important someones.
That Tuesday morning…I woke, completely unaware of the morning’s tragedies, and began waking children, preparing their breakfast, and doing their hair. We had ten children to be parents to, our first three and Tony’s seven siblings, and we were just a few weeks into their new school year. We didn’t generally turn on the TV in the middle of morning-time chaos. The phone rang…
Tony’s Auntie Rose was frantically asking if we were ok. I was confused. She started hollering something about all the bums going off. I was still confused. Finally realizing that I didn’t understand the situation, she simply demanded I turn on our TV. She wasn’t saying bums, I realized, she was saying bombs…Oh Sweet Jesus.
I have shed a thousand tears since that unimaginable morning, I have heard the names being read, and I have listened to the silence as we remember. I have seen the faces of thousands of strangers posted on walls, and I have heard a hundred of their stories. I have cried with the mothers who lost their grown children and the wives who lost their husbands, even if a television screen did separate us. I have seen the images of planes crashing, buildings burning and falling, and a pile of steel and concrete that got smaller and smaller until it was finally replaced with a beautiful memorial to all of the above.
Do you know what I think about the most though?
There were children on those planes, eight of them. Their names were:
•Christine Lee Hanson, 2
•David Brandhorst, 3
•Juliana McCourt, 4
•Dana Falkenberg, 3
•Zoe Falkenberg, 8
•Bernard Brown II, 11
•Asia Cottom, 11
•Rodney Dickens, 11
Each of these lives, however short, also had a story.
United Flight 175: The youngest of the victims was with both of her parents on their way to Disneyland. She was just a baby, two years old. She and my Destiny were the same age. Destiny is in the seventh grade now. She just made her grade’s varsity volleyball team. She is tall tand strong, compassionate and friendly…I think about everything that Christine Lee could have become.
Little David was only three years old and was with both of his parents. Juliana was only four. She and my Devaney were the same age. Devaney is a freshman this year. She was nervous and excited to move up to high school. She worked hard and had the honor of being selected to the ninth grade volleyball team and they battled yesterday to take first place in their first tournament. She is smart and lovely, and is very actively mapping out her future…I wonder what David and Juliana’s futures could have been. Ron Clifford had just escaped the North Tower in time to witness the second plane hitting the South Tower. That’s the plane that Juliana was on…Ron is her uncle.
American Flight 77: Dana and Zoe were sisters, they were just three and eight, and were traveling with their mom and dad on the first leg of their trip to Australia, where their mom was taking a new job. Their adventures as sisters were only just beginning. Bernard, Asia, and Rodney were the oldest of the children assasinated on September 11th, they were all eleven years old. They were all exceptional middle school students and they were the only of the eight that were traveling without their parents. Instead, they were accompanied by teachers and were on their way to an educational adventure to the California coast. They would all be twenty-one today, probably college students with bright potential. Gifts to the world. Sinita Brown was receiving several phone calls at her job that morning, people concerned for her husband because he worked at the Pentagon. She was obviously relieved that her husband was, instead, out of the building on a job-related golf trip. That short relief was painfully ripped from her upon learning that it was actually her son’s plane that hit the Pentagon.
Of course, the thousands of children that lost a parent that day had their lives changed forever – a tragedy of few words and numerous tears. I just don’t want us to forget that there were eight precious, innocent, beautiful children that lost their own lives on that day – their futures, their potentials, everything they could have and should have become.
September 11, 2001 – 2011
