25 Years Later, I Still Remember

Twenty-five years.

It hardly seems possible that a quarter of a century has passed since September 11, 2001.

And yet, when I think about that morning, the years seem to disappear.

I still remember where I was.

September 11 was already a special date in our family. It was my daddy’s birthday. He was still here then, although he’s been gone for 18 years now. So, September 11 has always carried its own personal memories for me.

That morning, I was pregnant with my son and getting ready to go to a doctor’s appointment. My thoughts were probably the ordinary thoughts of a mother expecting a baby—appointments, family, work, what needed to be done that day.

And then everything changed.

Like millions of Americans, I watched something unfold that was almost impossible to comprehend. We watched the towers. We watched the smoke. We watched people running through streets covered in ash. And slowly, we began to understand that this wasn’t an accident.

Our country was under attack.

There are moments in life that divide time into before and after.

September 11 was one of them.

Twenty-Five Years

The baby I was carrying that morning is now a grown man.

That may be what makes 25 years feel so astonishing to me.

An entire generation has grown up knowing September 11 only through photographs, videos, textbooks and the stories we tell them.

They don’t remember how blue the sky was that morning.

They don’t remember the confusion of those first reports or the feeling of watching television and wondering what could possibly happen next.

But those of us who lived it remember.

We remember the nearly 3,000 lives lost.

We remember the firefighters, police officers, first responders and ordinary people who ran toward danger when every instinct must have told them to run away.

We remember the passengers of Flight 93.

We remember the families who said goodbye that morning expecting an ordinary Tuesday—and never got the chance to say hello again.

But there is something else I remember, too.

I remember what happened afterward.

For a little while, the things that divided us didn’t seem quite as important.

American flags appeared everywhere. Churches filled. Strangers helped strangers. People called the ones they loved. We prayed for people whose names we didn’t know.

We were hurting, but we remembered that we belonged to one another.

Twenty-five years later, I think perhaps that’s something worth remembering, too.

Never Forget

“Never Forget” has been said so many times over these 25 years that it would be easy for the words to become simply a phrase we post every September.

I don’t want them to become that.

To never forget means we tell the stories.

We remember the lives, not simply the numbers.

We teach the children who weren’t here yet what happened and why it mattered.

We remember courage.

We remember sacrifice.

We remember how precious an ordinary morning really is.

And perhaps we remember to hold the people we love a little closer.

On September 11, 2001, I was a mother carrying a little boy and getting ready for a doctor’s appointment, with no idea that I was living through one of those ordinary mornings I would remember for the rest of my life.

My daddy was still here.

My son had not yet been born.

And none of us knew how much the world was about to change.

Twenty-five years later, so much of my own life has changed, too. But I can close my eyes and remember that morning.

I think I always will.

And for the generations who cannot remember it themselves, we will tell them.

We will tell them about the lives that were lost.

We will tell them about the heroes.

We will tell them about the courage and the sacrifice.

And maybe we’ll tell them something else, too:

That in one of America’s darkest moments, we remembered how to stand together.

Twenty-five years later, I still remember.

And I pray we always will.

In remembrance of the lives lost on September 11, 2001.We will never forget. 🇺🇸

— Ann Marie

Charles Marie’s for Grandmothers • Est. 1970