I began to write this yesterday, and knowing the date was the eleventh of the ninth month, you can no doubt guess about what tragic and catastrophic event I was thinking about. For some reason, I didn’t or couldn’t post it then. However, using a phrase most often used on our nation’s remembrance day of another terrible time and millions of lost lives, “we will remember them”, I will share it now.
I was thinking about getting my things together to walk to the children’s school to collect them and bring them home. I may have been recently ironing, because I went into the sitting room and the TV was on. I didn’t usually have it on during the day, too busy doing other things, but that day it was on. That afternoon I glanced at it as programmes were interrupted with shocking news. This was twenty-five years ago today, the 11th September, 2001. My children were aged eight and seven.
I stared in horror at what was being reported, the shocking scenes, unbelievable scenes being shown as the appalled commentator tried to describe what had happened. I grabbed my bag and keys and rushed out of the house, almost ran to the school which was about a mile away, overwhelmed with an irrational fear of something happening to my children – and at the same time part of my brains telling me I must have been mistaken, misunderstood, hallucinated –
As I neared the school I met other parents, some calm and friendly, the same as usual, some with distress painted on their faces, looking pale and shocked. There must have been a babble of voices “Did you see?” “It was on TV!” “Oh my God, it was shocking!” “What happened?” “Was it an accident?” “Crash? A plane crash?” “America – in America?” “What happened?”
I was barely paying attention, waiting, beyond anxious, feeling sick, full of fear – were my children safe? Were we safe? Was it war? I was born after the war, but my father was a paratrooper and saw action in France, Italy, Greece and North Africa. I had grown up watching films about the war – the Blitz, bombing, aircraft shot down, horror and disaster. If America was under attack were we safe? America, our ally? I felt sick and very frightened.
We had gone on holiday, every summer since 1995, to Northern Ireland, a place which had seen sad and terrible events which shattered lives, caused the loss of so many innocent people, but was now at peace. When we went there – because it looked such a wonderful place for a family holiday, there were still signs of the recent past. We were stopped at checkpoints by armed soldiers who looked at our passports and documents,. There were walls separating areas, barbed wire barriers, frightening graffiti – but we found a little pocket of calm and welcoming hospitality.
We hadn’t lived in terror, but we had met people who had and had some small understanding of what random acts of violence meant – but the terrifying and sickening scenes I’d just watched on TV…
The children came out of school, happy and pleased to see me and wanting to tell me about their day and what they’d done and who they’d played with and what their teacher had said… and I barely listened as I rushed them home. It’s instinct, isn’t it, to go home to be safe, to gather your family and hold them close.
So today, on the anniversary of those shocking events, and remembering the heroes and the heroism of so many, we honour them all. We think of the suffering of so many people in the days, months and years afterwards, which resonate even for people like me who were far away and whose friends and family were safe. It is right that we remember, it’s a small way we can pay tribute. We use the phrase “Lest we forget” for other wars, but it’s also true for this tragedy.
Lois Elsden 