Today, September 11, 2014, is thirteen years since the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, colleagues were visiting from Washington D.C. We had finished our morning meeting when someone stuck their head through the door and said, “There’s been a plane accident in New York. The plane crashed into the World Trade Center.” We walked into the hall and stopped at the door of an office with a TV against the far wall. As we watched, a second plane struck the other tower of the World Trade Center. I remember being confused and saying, “That’s no accident.”

It was not.

2,763 people died in New York: 2,606 on the ground from the collision, fire and collapse of the Twin Towers, 127 passengers and 20 crew aboard the two planes, and the 10 hijackers, 5 to each plane. 189 people died at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.: 125 at the Pentagon, 53 passengers and 6 crew in the single plane, and 5 hijackers. 44 people died in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when the passengers and crew, talking to each other and over their cell phones, charged the hijackers who rolled and crashed the plane short of its destination, the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.: 33 passengers, 7 crew and 4 hijackers died in that field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

It was not an accident.

None of them were accidents.

On September 11, 2001, 2,997 people died.

Many of the dead in New York have not been and never will be identified.

I am still confused.

I think this is a thing that cannot be understood.

I think this is a thing that can only be remembered and not forgotten.

I know I cannot forget.

There are only a few things in my life I can go back to and see clearly again.

That TV and second plane striking I can see as if I just stopped and looked through the door.

Written words do not work well here.

I think only prayers do,

For healing and

For life.

Grandpa Jim