Topic: Mourning

On September 11, six years later: Mourn, honor, and move on …

By Christine Anne Piesyk | September 11, 2007 |

“Mourn as you must, but honor me most by continuing to live and be the best that you can be.”

In December, 2001, I reluctantly went to Ground Zero, to the pile of debris, the hole in the ground, the shattered remnants of buildings that had been the World Trade Center complex in downtown Manhattan. As so many others had already done, I inhaled the dusty air, some of which may have been human once.

I stood on the gallery of a church, leaning against one of its columns, staring aghast at the immensity of the devastation. Rubble. Piles of rubble. Behind makeshift fences and barriers. Designed to keep out a steady stream of the curious and the mournful.

I looked skyward, from ground level up to the top of a faceless building, exterior walls gone, the world privy to the angle of every desk and chair and file cabinet in the now wall-less, fully ventilated window offices. Huge loosely hung sheets of black tarp fell a hundred stories from roofline to sidewalk, and running high across the that roofline, touching the clear blue sky above, was a multi-story American flag.

I remembered so many times before,walking across the plaza, riding the elevator to Windows on the World, dining with my mother as the panorama of the Big Apple glittered around us. Seemed like yesterday. «Read the rest of this article»

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