Lest we foget 9/11

The twentieth anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history came this past weekend, and it’s hard to believe how long it’s been.

As someone whose parents attended New York University and still have many friends living in Manhattan, you can imagine how hard 9/11 hit for my family. I was only five years old when it happened, and honestly it’s one of the first vivid memories I can recall from my childhood. I’ll admit, at the time I was too young to be able to fully comprehend what was going on in the moment. All I can remember was my mother and father in tears, on the phone trying to get ahold of all their friends living in New York.

I’ve been to ground zero twice in my life, the first time I went was a few years after the attack and there was pretty much nothing to see as it was all under construction. The second time was a lot different, the memorial fountains were completed by then and they had all the names of the victims carved into marble. The most staggering part of that experience was seeing the nearly thousands of names of those who lost their lives. It’s hard to comprehend how many people died in a two hour span.

Another part of this sad story is the fact that so many brave men and women from the New York fire and police department gave their lives to help evacuate the buildings before they went down, one of them being the fiancee of my father’s best friend from school.

9/11 was an event that changed the world forever; it changed air travel world wide, it sparked a way in the middle east that caused loss of life for not just American soldiers, but many Canadians as well. It’s been two decades now since that tragic day, but the mark it left on the United States as well as the whole world can still be felt.

So, with all that being said, I’d like to take this opportunity to remember those who not only lost their lives on 9/11, but to those who gave their lives to save others. It was a day that the world will always remember as one of the saddest in human history.

9/11, 2001. Lest we forget.