September 11 - Belated observance

My computer was down and I was sick, so I'm late with this. But I'm going to do it anyway. I just left a comment on anti-wife's blog in response to her post on 911, and I'll repeat it here.

I was in Miami when it happened, visiting a friend at his office. A patient called, and I could hear my friend going, "What? What? Really!" I realized he was trying to calm the caller. Then he put down the phone and laughed - an uncertain laugh. It was one of his patients, he said, ranting about planes crashing into buildings all over the country. He'd have to check the old man's meds. Then another call came, from someone sane and reliable, and when he put down the phone and told me what was going on, there was just shock. Disbelief.

Well, the phone began to go crazy. By midday the Florida authorities were telling everyone to get home, that the turnpikes were open, just get home. My friend closed up his office and took me home. When I got in and turned on the TV I saw my first images, and I sat there, tears pouring down my face, until the small hours of the morning. I've seen those images hundreds of times, and they are still so incredible that I doubt my eyes.

Over the next days, I would go outside at night and stare at the sky. The long string of aircraft on the flight path to Fort Lauderdale Airport had disappeared. The sky was empty. It was very uncanny.

I didn't suffer a personal loss, or a connection to a personal loss like you did, but I know what you feel. I remember. I was there. Fourteen Trinidadians died in those towers. The tragedy of those days reached everywhere, and touched everyone.