Fellow New Yorkers . . .

Did you see the blue lights yesterday?

 Image from here

This is what I saw coming over the Tappan Zee Bridge last night.  This is my skyline.  I fell in love with its splendor and majesty when I looked at it from across the river visiting my future college home, St. John's University.  I watched it change from across that river from the roof of my dorm room.  I didn't watch it on television.  I watched it live and in person.  I cried and I dialed the cell phone numbers of friends who lived a block away at NYU and Pace University.  One week into my freshman year of college and my world was shattering around me.

I don't watch the memorial on television.  I avoid it on purpose.  It's not that I don't want to remember.  It's not that I want to forget either.  The problem is I do remember and the images wake me in the night sometimes.  I didn't watch it from the streets like my friend's did but I watched helplessly in the borough next door.  I couldn't help them.  My campus shut down and wouldn't allow anyone to leave.  I couldn't run to help them.

Two months later, while coming home from visiting my friend at Pace, I walked down the streets to the nearest ACE subway.  Maybe it's because it was 4AM.  Maybe it's because I wanted to believe it was a dream.  Maybe I had become numb to the smell of death and burnt out steel.  I came to a barricade.  At that moment, I didn't understand why it was there.  I looked beyond it and saw the rubble.  Another image I cannot erase.

I will not forget.  I will remember.  I will always be haunted.  I hope you feel the same.

Post-Script: I know that non-New Yorkers feel the void, too.  I just live in the shadow of that great big city and those lights carried me home last night.  They haunt me and I need to vent.