Monday, May 2, 2011

I've been waiting...

I've been waiting 9 years, 7 months, and 20 days for this day to come. 


When I was in my late teens, my mom pulled out an old scrapbook she had once made. Newspaper clippings from the assassination of JFK. As she leafed through each page, we sat and talked about the event. Where she was when it happened, how her world had forever changed that day....


Seeing the old clippings gave me a glimpse into a life I never knew.


I wanted to do the same.....a bittersweet kind of feeling that a "life changing" event would have to occur in order for me to do this..


That day came on Sept 11, 2001. I sat watching a plane slam into the side of a building.  I ate my cereal. I was writing day 2 of my CA exams that day...


Great timing I thought.  Some crazy dude flew his little plane too low and hit a building. 


I came out of the exam 5 hours later and Tim called...I remember his exact words....


The world we knew is very different now.


Each day I would clip articles from the newspaper and carefully arrange them into a scrapbook...
For 84,456 hours...the last page in my scrapbook had been left blank. 


5,067,360 minutes has passed. Each year Tim and I flip the pages, the news paper articles now fading.  Remembering like it was yesterday....until today. 

304,041,600 seconds has passed until I could finally glue down the last piece of the puzzle.  A sense of relief, a sense of closure for me. 

And so, this scrapbook is finished, and one day I will sit with my kids and read to them the stories of loss, despair, courage and sacrifice..


Forever Changed. 
Forever Remembered.



 

5 comments:

  1. i hope all the families who lost someone due to that tragic day can now have some sort of closure. although easier said that done i'm sure.

    a decade in the making.

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  2. What a great post! I always buy a magazine dedicated to the event(Sept 11th, Obama, Tsunami, Royal weddings ;-) and put it in each kids memory box. Hannah was 8 months old on September 11th and I remember sitting holding her and crying for her future. Now 10 years later I am happy that her future is a little bit safer.

    Candace

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  3. Justice for sure as it is such a hard pill to swallow, still.

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  4. Cheryl, you left me with chills and goosebumps. You are amazing!

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  5. To Anonymous: great idea - wish I would have thought of that sooner...I will start now even though my kids are old enough to remember things happening today - still a good reminder for them in years to come.

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