Fifteen years later, the one odd vestige of that day that still affects me is that my emotions are left vulnerable. It reveals itself in the most ridiculous moments: an obvious tear-jerking moment in a movie, a TV show, someone talking. In these manipulative moments, my emotions are too easily manipulated. I can’t help but feel it well up. I realize what is happening and why and I tamp it back down. But this is how I am reminded when I least expect to be.
And then there are the photos I cannot bear to look at. The worst for me — I can barely type the words — is the falling man photo. It brings back the images I wrote about once in my news report of the events and never speak of again.
I haven’t yet been able to bear the idea of going to the 9/11 museum. I don’t much like going to the memorial, which is beautiful, yes, but it is a hole in our city and souls.
On this morning at this moment, as I type this, hearing the bell that marks the minute when the second plane hit the south tower brings back the feeling of the heat I felt on the other side of the impact and then I cry.
We said we would never forget. It is not easy to remember.
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Here is the story I wrote for the Star-Ledger the afternoon of the attacks.
Here is my oral history of my experience on 9/11, recorded (badly) a few days after the event.
Here is a meditation I delivered on the jahreszeit of 9/11 in my church, when I read the Kaddish.
Here are the tweets I posted remembering each moment as it passed ten years later.
