Remembering.

As I write this post the second tower fell 5 years ago. 10:26 a.m.
Right here in our beloved city of New York.

The conductor announced "World Trade Center train" this morning, as he does every single morning of my commute to work, but today it made me queasy. I ride into Ground Zero every single morning as the Path train comes right into the site after crossing the river...but this morning was different. As different as the last 4 anniversaries of 9/11.

While getting ready for work, I watched the remembrance ceremonies on TV but 11 minutes later the remembrance was no longer simply a televised event. I could hear it, see it and breathe it.

As our train snaked into WTC, we could see throngs of officers, officials and people who had lost loved ones. The wives, the children, the mothers and fathers. The names of people who died on this tragic day were being read out. When I left home they were in the B's. When I reached WTC they were in the F's. I stood and watched, eyes welled with tears. Us Path train commuters probably had the closest public view to the ceremony.

This is all too real for us. This is not simply something awful you see on a screen. Every day as I head from the Path train to the NYC subway line -also in the World Trade Center, I pass a pillar with a sign that reads "these pillars are part of the original World Trade Center structure". Today I reached out and touched the pillar standing real and strong. Five years ago, this pillar was a nobody, nothing but a pillar whose sole purpose in life was to support something...today I want to hug it and cry. Today it supports my emotions. It bears so many memories and so much sorrow. Not a strong pillar but a pillar of strength.

One can never fully grasp the events that happened that day. No matter how many movies, documentaries and shows are made, there will always be brand new shock and horror, tears and anguish. I felt it all over again when I watched "9/11" on CBS last night. I just kept thinking..."I walk through this place every single day, I can't believe this is what happened here."

I don't know how I feel about CNN (Online) broadcasting the real news as it played that day - do we really need to re-live every single second of that day? Isn't walking through this gaping hole in the ground enough to bear? And why is the hole still a 70-foot-deep hole? The entire West side of the city can develop and bust out scores of high-rises in the last five years and we can't build anything to fill the void in the downtown skyline? A shrine for friends and family to visit? I don't want to ride into a dusty crater every morning. 10 feet high or a thousand feet high...we'll take anything.