These posts were taken from my on-line, real-time posts on that day, and after. I’ve thought, now and again, about taking them down.. and then I’ll get an e-mail from someone saying they had discovered them, by accident or chance, and talking about their own experiences…
Even now, more than a decade later.
If you were there, if you lost someone you cared about, if, like me, you stood helpless, able only to bear witness to the lives lost.. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay not to be “over it.” Sorrow isn’t weakness, and those we love and remember never really die.
Observations and Trauma
From: Laura Anne Gilman
Subject: oh god. oh god…
Date: 11 Sep 2001 09:01:39 EDTa plane hit the world trade center this morning. We can see it from our office windows. There’s a five story high hole in the side, smoke and fire everywhere.
Oh dear god…
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Giving Blood
The Center opened at 8. I got there a few minutes after and they were already using overflow parking across the street. 25 people in the line ahead of me (not including the folk already inside the donation room, another 50 or so. 7 people in line behind me within minutes. They’re telling us it will be a two hour wait and anyone who can come back later in the week should. I’m tempted, but know this is the best chance I’ve got. I just wish I had stopped to get a newspaper beforehand. Or brought a book. What was I thinking?
Aftershocks
From: Laura Anne Gilman
Subject: I wonder…
Date: 12 Sep 2001 12:02:12 GMTHow the events of the past 36 hours would have been different without the Internet. No Instant Messenger, no e-mail that can slip through jammed phone circuts, no check-in web sites for people to make contact… and that’s not even taking into consideration the countless newsgroups and bbs where people are greiving together, or the news snippets carried across the world.
Where there is connection, there would have been a space much like the one in the skyline today…
Visiting Ground Zero
When my friend Jules (visiting from Tenessee) and I made plans to go museuming today, I asked her if she wanted to go to Ground Zero. She said yes.