An early morning skyline view from the Staten Island Ferry. This was the daily view of thousands of commuters to Manhattan before 9/11. Years later, I met with my friend, the captain of the ferry, in Sacramento for lunch. John had to leave New York because he just couldn’t live another day in that memory. He stopped his ship in the middle of the harbor that 9/11 morning, as he and his entire shipload of travelers and crew watched the horror unfold.

After a long night of late work well into the morning, I was in a deep sleep. The repeating ring of the telephone awakened me. I received an alarming telephone call from a close friend frantically trying to get my attention. She said “just get up and turn on the TV. You won’t believe what is happening”. She was absolutely right.

As I sat there on my white leather couch in my small rental home in Roseville, tuned in as the world was tuned in, to the disaster in New York as it unfolded live for everyone to see. We were all New Yorkers that day.

I had previously lived in Manhattan. After returning to California, I traveled to New York City often to teach classes at The Learning Exchange and spiritual training centers as a part of my ministry. I also met with many clients as a spiritual life coach each visit. Through these visits I became friends with so many great people who lived in The City. I stayed at their homes, got to know their families, learned about their lives, loves, and fears. Many of them worked in the immediate area of the Twin Towers.

As I sat there watching the towers fall along with the rest of the world, I had no idea if any of those friends or members of their families were being crushed under the weight of that destruction. It was a personal anguish and horror felt by millions simultaneously. It was a grief embedded forever. And we as a nation vowed to never forget.

One of the many memorial walls surrounding the Ground Zero site. Photo by Paul Scholl

Everything changed for everyone during those hours. Terrorism had come to our shores, and those whom we had charged to protect us failed miserably. We have been paying for their failures ever since.

And for those who paid the ultimate price, giving their lives to save others inside and around the Twin Towers? And for all the First Responders who witnessed the death and destruction at the end of their fingertips and right before their own eyes? What did they get from so many after only 25 years? Many forgot.

Yes, life goes on, but as individuals we do not. Our time is limited. We are here to understand life, liberty, love, and loss. We are here to understand joy and grief. These become the web that builds our evolution, our DNA that we pass on to those who follow us. If we do not teach our emotional history to our children, good and bad, they will suffer repeating our mistakes and the feeling of betrayal from us for not forewarning them.

Enter our current day Neon Nation. Have we lost our way in one generation? Does the “Shiny thing” distract us so easily because it is too hard for us to focus on the truth and explaining it to others as our society crumbles around us?

A few months after 9/11 I traveled back to New York to offer support to any of those friends who needed it. I traveled to the site while the clean-up was still underway. I saw the scorched church and cemetery. There were still many “Missing” flyers posted to walls and lampposts. I saw the many memorials around the site. When I found one memorial that listed all of the names of those lost I read every one of them. I thank God to this day that not one of my friends was on that list.

A memorial sculpture remembering all the construction workers.

The history of Ground Zero is complex and still unfolding. The more the years fall away the more important it is that we reveal as much as we can about that fateful morning and all that led up to it.

When someone kills your son or daughter, husband or wife, it doesn’t matter what political party they belong to. It doesn’t matter what religion they belong to. It doesn’t matter their motive. All that matters is your loved one is gone forever. Grief takes over. And no one can ever really fill that void. It never truly heals. You just learn how to manage it in the silent times, alone with your Creator.

All those who lost loved ones during those tragic days only asked one thing from us. Never Ever Forget. 

On this remembrance weekend 25 years later, take a few moments in silence to share the grief and the weight of the losses experienced by so many on September 11, 2001. If only with that simple action, love will prevail.