[CatStarESP4]

I was at home enjoying a day off from classes and planning what I was going to do that day. When I heard that two planes crashed into the WTC, I was in shock and disbelief. Then there was news about a plane crashing into the Pentagon and I was scared. Finally, the fourth plane that went down in Pennsylvania. My plans went down the drain when I was ordered to stay home. My mom saw the Twin Towers collapse while she was at work in the midtown area. She and her coworkers were sent home early that day. I couldn't sleep that night.

I sent out an email distribution to my sorority sisters expressing my anger, sadness, shock and outrage. I also shared a moment that I went with my cousins to the observation deck several month before the tragedy. One of my sisters responded in anger that I didn't know what it was like to lose friends or family members. I almost responded by saying that I nearly lost a friend (she is a flight attended formerly with Pan Am, now with Delta) who is like my big sister on Pan Am Flight 103 (she was assigned to that flight) if it weren't for a switch that saved her life (I felt so bad for the girl who took her place on that ill-fated flight). She is probably dealing with survivors guilt, but lucky to be alive. I was also afraid for my ex-boyfriend since he has family in Scotland, but not in Lockerbie. I was afraid that I would lose both my parents in the first attack of the WTC in 1993 since the had to catch their subway trains there, but it happened after they arrived at work (mom - midtown and dad - uptown). I didn't respond to her angry email, don't ask me why. She later apologized to me saying that it was the media coverage that disturbed her and that she didn't mean to take it out on me.

I thought I didn't know anyone directly who was killed that day until my mom told me that a young friend whom I had since in about thirteen years at the time was one of the victims. He was a firefighter who joining the FDNY after working for several years as a paramedic. They never found his body and his mother has a container of ash instead of burying him. He was supposed to get married the following year. His fiancee was pregnant, but soon lost the baby.

My alma mater lost a total of 21 alumni on 11 September 2001. Two of them were in my graduating class and I never knew them in life.

I apologize for the length, but I needed to get it off my system.