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Shock
Posted by: Melissa from Chicopee, MA Sunday November 11, 2001 @ 10:13 PST
the first news i had of the attacks was in my car on the way to class that tuesday morning. the radio announcers speculated that maybe it had been a small plane to crash. i didn't think much of it. this was at about ten minutes to nine that morning. by the time my first class had finished at 10:30 am, the face of our country had been changed forever. i attended a brief prayer vigil in our school chapel, then numbly headed for home, listening for any updates on the radio. fear struck me when i heard the mayor of a local city say that the massachusetts national guard, based in that city, would be called up. my fiance is a member of the guard. i got home as quickly as i could, calling him over and over again and getting no answer. i must have called fifteen times before giving up. that afternoon, my younger sister called to tell me that our aunt, my father's sister, had been scheduled to fly to los angeles from boston sometime that week- but none of us knew when. it wasn't until the next day that we heard that her flight had not been scheduled for that morning. i was lucky- my fiance has not been called to new york, or anywhere else- yet. none of my family was injured or killed. but this tragedy has touched me as it has touched every citizen of our country. we have become more patriotic, more cautious. we have grown closer as a nation through the indelible loss of so many of our own. we can never bring back those we lost on september 11th. but, in their memory, we can work towards a new kind of safety. we have lost our innocence- never again will we blindly believe that we are safe just because we are americans. but we can work towards the dream of a better world, better because there is one less threat to humanity. may all those lost on september 11th rest in peace knowing that they did not die in vain...we will never forget them.