It happens every year as September approaches. The first snap of cool air, the first wash of bright blue sky that comes along with it, start the chain of memories that lead back to September 11, 2001.
After nearly a decade, you’d think the images would have receded but in the days leading up to the anniversary of the awful event, that never seems the case. This year, for instance, family, friends and neighbors honed in on the approaching anniversary as August drew to a close.
It could have been the crisp weather. It could also have been the news focus on the freeing of the Lockerbie bomber or the impending visit of Libyan strong man Muammar Qaddafi.
For whatever reason, September 11 became a compelling topic of conversation a bit earlier than usual. A lot of the conversation focused on memories of the day itself and some have chosen to commemorate it.
Many spoke about the chronology of the day of the attacks. Just like where you were when the Kennedys and Martin Luther King were assassinated, Roosevelt died, Armstrong walked on the moon or the Challenger vaporized, the events of September 11 never fail to come into sharp relief for a whole lot of people.
One friend and neighbor recalled how the morning calm was shattered by the piercing scream of a co-worker who picked up the phone to learn of the attacks from her husband who worked at the Trade Center.
“She started yelling into the phone, ‘get out, get out of there, get out!” my friend remembered.
“He did get out and he walked I think it was seven miles over bridges during all that mayhem and confusion to get to the home of relatives. He couldn’t get out of the city that night,” she said.
Others talked about how a mundane morning began transforming when guy on the street called the “Today Show” to report that the tail section of a plane was sticking out of the Trade Center.
Another friend talked about the horror of the hours that followed and the never-to-be-forgotten news footage. She worried that a new campaign to memorialize the day by devoting the September 11 anniversary every year to good works would somehow minimize the anguish of those days.
“One guy called in a talk show to say that he spends the day putting quarters in overdue parking meters in memory of the September 11 victims. Can you believe it?”
Actually, I can. Among the most pathetic images of the days and weeks after the attacks are the cars left behind at train stations throughout the greater metropolitan area by people who would never come to claim them.
Putting a coin in an expiring meter in their memory may not be the best way to commemorate those who were lost but it’s something.
If you remember September 11, 2002, then you remember how flags, which had the year before bedecked everything from front porches and doorways to automobiles, reappeared.
You remember the moments of silence in the public square, the prayer services and the tolling bells.
The raw memories that sparked those commemorations may have subsided but that doesn’t mean the day shouldn’t be commemorated in the public square and the private heart.
One good friend thinks it’s up to everyone to find his or her own way to focus on the events of that day and the days that followed. Putting coins in parking meters, doing good works, praying, finding solace in silence, they all work as memorials, she thinks. Remembering in any way you can, anyway you have time for, that’s what’s important, she said.