Never Forgotten

I can never forget first hearing the curious news that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, the crashed CNN website when I tried to learn more, the shock when I heard a second plane had slammed into the second tower, the quiet and horrified conference room where we watched the unfolding of the terror, the dismissal of my coworkers when I explained that the towers were going to fall because of how they were constructed and the temperature tolerance of steel, the shock and odd nods of acceptance when what I predicted came to pass, the uncontrollable hysterics of a coworker who had been in the towers when they were first attacked in 1993, my 10-mile walk to Williamsburg over the NYC Marathon route in reverse from the Queensboro Bridge, the sadness on my father's face when he came to retrieve me to take me home, the desperate e-mail sent to friends to see if everyone was okay, the relief the day after that I had no funerals to attend because all my friends in and around the scene had made it out alive, the thinking about what would have happened to me had I not moved from my Wall Street job just three months prior, the gratitude in learning one year later that my wife was one of the honorable rotation of shomrim for the deceased members of our tribe. Never forget, they say. I have never forgotten.