Rembering New York eight years ago

When I think back to eight years ago today, I remember it like it was yesterday, a cliché but true. I don't just remember that tragic day, today; I have remembered it every single day of my life since, as do countless other people. People all over our world. People who were in New York. We saw and experienced and lived through something unimaginable, something that couldn't have possibly happened in our lifetime, yet it did. The smell of its aftermath still lingers large in my memories as does everything about that day. The view of the tip of Manhattan on fire as my brother and I hauled over the Queensbourough Bridge to some form of safety. We remember a city that was wallpapered with people. Flyers of the hundreds and thousands of people that were missing. People that would never find their way home, people that were lost forever. We remember waking up having had the most horrific nightmare. But soon realized that it was as real as we were. We remember the street side vigils, the gatherings in the park, the countless memorial services. We remember the bomb scares, the evacuations, being stuck on the subway. And we learned what anthrax was. People were changed forever. Children lost people that they had yet to get the chance to really know and love. They also lost their innocence in an instant. They grew up overnight without ever knowing it. Yet we became a part of something amazing, something that I never thought I would witness in Manhattan. We saw an outpouring of love on the streets. We saw strangers helping each other.The taxis stopped honking. We saw people unable to get up, to move out of their apartments, to get up off the street to move across it, all part of our days in the months that followed. And for every one of those visions we saw people, helping people. We tried to help ourselves. In an instant a city that was known for its resilience was cracked to the core very literally, and we the people were too. But in all of that something amazing happened, yet another thing I thought would never be possible at the time. We survived, our world survived, our people survived. We got to move on. It was the most unimaginable thing during that time of my life. But here I sit. We are here. We are still kicking. Our world in all of its craziness, has prevailed. May it do so for the rest of eternity.