Journeys of the Questress - WTC
I Miss 9/11
Home
The Way it Was - 1
The Way it Was - 2
Sept 19 - When Tomorrow Never Comes
Sept 27 - Oral Interpretation
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 1
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 2
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 3
Oct 11 - Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Oct 28 - Each Day I Search the Rubble
Nov 12 - When Spires Fall
Nov 19 - 911 The Rape of America
Dec 14 - Just A Thought
Dec 18 - A Sense of Place
Feb 2 - Final Pass to the End Zone
March 3 - Sitting on the Edge
March 14- Do You Still Remember
March 20 - Virtual Walk-Through
March 25 - When Will It End - Part 1
March 25 - When Will It End - Part 2
April 1 - Towers of Light
May 14 - View From Above
May 30 - Tunnel At the End of the Light
May 31 - Seventeen Hundred
Aug 9 - From the Margins Erased
Aug 30 - The Train Doesn't Stop There Anymore
Sept 9 - Ceremonies of Light and Dark
Sept 10 - Just An Anniversary
Sept 12 - September Holds Great Promise
Literary Reflections
Rebirth and Resurrection
The Winter Garden Springs To Life
The Winter Garden Springs To Life - con't
Underpass to the Past
Rebuilding Ground Zero
Under Hallowed Ground
Borders
Yahrzeit
What Will Fill the Void?
I Submit a Design
Footprints in the Dust
My Memorial Design Submission
My Memorial Design - Drawings
New Path Train Station
Path Station Tour
May We Never Forget
That Which Surives
War Without End
4th Anniversary
Footprints in the Dust
Void
I Miss 9/11
Time Comes Between Us
A Thousand Cranes
Fear Factor
Love Letters On The Wall
Empty Chairs
Sitting on the Edge of Forever
Walking the Perimeter of Emptiness
A Counting of Days
For Friends Absent But Not Forgotten
Stigmata
The Memory Keeper's Promise
Unbreak My Heart
Standing On The Edge Of Forever
Both Sides Now
A Memory In Time
The Gravity of Loss
The Survivors Rise Up
Flowers Will Bloom
The Fire Within Us
The Sentinel
Stronger Than The Storm
Between the Candle and the Stars
Ghosts
A Journey Through Remembrance
Canticle of Remembrance
Beyond the Crucible of Chaos
Journey Through Remembrance project
What See We Now
Forever In Our Hearts
Keeping the Flame Alive
The Rebuilding of Ground Zero continues
Does Anyone Care Anymore?
Where Is Our Story Teller of Pain
At Memory's Edge
Dust Thou Art and to Dust Thou Shalt Return
7x7x70
Heroes Never Die
The Flame Inside Our Hearts
The Year of the Heroes of 9/11
Déjà Vu
Remembering 9/11 in the year of COVID-19
Coronavirus Decimates Ailing Sept. 11 Responders
Touching From a Distance
That Which Survives 20 years later
2021 - 20 years later
Memories of Terror Return
Putin's Name Covered Over On Teardrop Memorial
The 9/11 Tribute Museum Closes
When Memories Fade Away
St. Nicholas at Ground Z is rebuilt
The Blue Wall of the Unidentified Victims
When Time Calls Your Name
When Art Gets It All Wrong

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I Miss 9/11 (where are we now 5 years later?)
I miss 9/11. What we have now is nothing compared to that day, the first week, the first year. We had a sense of community, a sense of connectivity, all through our shared grief and shock. For the first time since the Vietnam war, we had a unifying event that brought people together: to express their opinions, to rale against the Fates, to tell stories. And what stories we told; to our friends, our relatives, to strangers. No one was a stranger in those days, for we all shared a common experience, the pain of loss.

For some the loss was achingly real. A loved one, a friend, a coworker, gone forever. And so we comforted, we held hands, we talked, we let all into our hearts. We also wrote essays, and poems, and articles. We created, through photographs, the design of our pain made real. Raw emotion, captured in a hundred different ways, by a hundred different hearts, became the art of the moment. And we wanted more. We wanted to continue to feel the pain, continue to trace the agony through that scar upon the earth we christened “Ground Zero”.
It became the greatest reality show ever produced. Through a year, we watched the smoking stench filled pile become smaller and smaller. Until it was only a pit. We tuned in each night to learn of the plight of the 2000+ missing. We were one in our hunger to know the latest details of what happened each day.
 
Then one day the Pit was empty. There was no more recovery, no more excavation with hope, nothing. The news shows at night became silent. We drifted apart. Our flags became tattered, our images of the Twin Towers, now were only ghosts on storefront logos and NYC souvenirs. Five years have passed and what do we have? A war in far away lands, a memorial fraught with controversies, and an empty dust filled pit.
 
We can’t even locate the façade that had been such a prominent symbol of strength. Crashed to the ground, it remained standing against all odds, a testament to what cannot be destroyed, our souls. We lost the cornerstone to the Freedom Tower. Design revisions had it carted away to the stone company, engraved but forgotten, to be stumbled upon by a lady looking for granite when having her kitchen countertops redone. And we can’t decide on what to do with a section of the WTC plaza’s stairs that sits in the Pit, some want it removed, others, who used it as an escape route that day, feel it represents the stairway to survival. We have come full circle from a nation united in grief, to a nation torn apart by our petty concerns.
 
Five years...what does time mean to those whose loved ones vanished on that day? What does time mean to those who survived but are wracked with health problems from the dust they inhaled? What does time mean in a world where we try to make every second count through multitasking with our electronic devices but have no time to say “I love you” before rushing out the door to catch our train? And what if that train were our last? What time would it be then?
 
And so we go on, limping along in this new “post 9/11” world. The names of the dead and missing are being read today. The President made his annual trip to Ground Zero to lay a wreath. The sun shines bright again, as it did 5 years ago. And once again, the wind rises and whips the dust about...as it did on that day. Say hello to year 6...will anything change?
                                      (c) 2006 Leona M Seufert