What “Never Forget” Means to Me, 25 Years Later

Twenty-five years ago today, my ex-husband was in the Army and stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, now part of Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM). We lived on post, just inside the gate.

At the time, I worked graveyard shift as a data entry technician at a toxicology lab in downtown Tacoma. Our work area was basically down in a basement, pretty removed from the outside world. And this was 2001. There were no smartphones in our hands, no social media feeds constantly updating us, no notifications telling us something was happening on the other side of the country.

So as far as I knew, it had been a normal night.

I finished my shift that morning and went upstairs to the break room to grab my lunch stuff out of the fridge before heading home.

There was a TV on in the room, tuned to the news, but I was alone in the quiet of the early morning.

I looked up just in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

I didn’t really understand what I was watching yet. I stood there for a few minutes, staring at the television, trying to process it. Eventually one thought pushed its way through everything else.

I need to get home.

My husband was supposed to have surgery that morning at Madigan Army Medical Center, and suddenly we had no idea what the rest of the day was going to look like.

The drive home on I-5 was already a mess. Security at Fort Lewis had, understandably, tightened almost immediately, and traffic trying to get onto post was ridiculously backed up.

But what I remember most isn’t really the traffic.

It’s the faces.

I remember looking around at the people in the cars beside me. Every face I could see looked sad and deeply concerned.

So many of us were heading toward a military installation. Some of those people were soldiers. Others, like me, were family members of soldiers.

We didn’t know exactly what had just started, or what it was going to mean for any of us.

My husband had been home sleeping while I worked, and by the time I made it back, he was awake and anxiously waiting for me.

We still had a little time before we needed to leave for Madigan, so we did what millions of other Americans were doing that morning.

We sat glued to CNN.

Because he was in the Army, there was another layer of uncertainty for us.

Was his unit going to be put on alert?

Was the surgery still going to happen?

Would he even be able to have surgery with something like this unfolding?

And, bigger than all of that, what exactly was happening to our country?

Eventually we headed to Madigan, still not knowing whether they were actually going to take him into surgery.

Finally, they did.

While he was in surgery, I sat alone in the waiting room with CNN playing on the television, watching the events of the morning continue to unfold.

The towers.

The smoke.

The Pentagon.

Pennsylvania.

The replays.

The updates.

The questions nobody had answers to yet.

Over and over again.

I didn’t have family with me. My husband was in surgery. There wasn’t anyone sitting beside me to talk to or lean on.

I just sat there and watched as the magnitude of what had happened became clearer and clearer.

Eventually, his surgery was over.

We went home.

And life continued.

But we weren’t going home to the same country we’d known the day before.

Twenty-five years later, almost everything about my life looks different. I live in a different state. I no longer have the same husband. And our country certainly doesn’t look the same either.

But when I think back on 9/11, I don’t only remember the horror of that day.

I remember what happened afterward.

For a brief moment, Americans came together in a way I hadn’t seen before, and certainly haven’t seen lately.

People helped each other. Strangers talked to one another. Flags were everywhere. There was a feeling that, whatever our differences might have been the day before, something bigger than those differences connected us.

Damn, I miss that.

And I’ve been thinking about what that means beyond simply saying that I miss it.

Maybe getting a little bit of it back doesn’t require some huge national moment.

Maybe it starts much smaller.

Wave at your neighbor.

Look up from your screen once in a while. I’m as guilty of that one as anybody. I’m literally sitting here writing this on a screen.

I live in a semi-rural area now, and it genuinely disappoints me when people don’t wave. Maybe that sounds silly, but out here, your neighbors matter.

You may not be far from town, but when you’ve got dirt roads, acreage, animals, locked gates and some distance between houses, the person down the road may someday be the person who notices something is wrong, helps you with an animal emergency, or stops when your car is sitting somewhere it shouldn’t be.

There’s something similar when you’re out in the islands, especially on the water.

When another boat passes, you wave.

Always.

Part of it is just friendliness. There’s something kind of wonderful about encountering somebody else when you’re out on that much ocean.

But I think there’s something deeper to it, too.

You understand that you’re in an environment where help may not be readily available. If something goes wrong, that person in the other boat may suddenly matter a whole lot more than they did five minutes ago.

It pays to acknowledge each other. It pays to be a neighbor.

Somewhere along the way, I think we’ve gotten too comfortable acting as though we don’t need one another.

We do.

And maybe that’s part of what “never forget” means to me 25 years later.

That morning, my first thought after seeing that second plane hit was simple.

I need to get home.

I did.

I made it back to a husband who was anxiously waiting for me.

Thousands of other people never got that homecoming.

They had gone to work. They had boarded airplanes. They had started what they thought would be an ordinary Tuesday morning. Their families expected them home that night, too.

So today, I remember them.

I remember the first responders who ran toward something everyone else was trying to escape.

I remember the many service members and military families who understood almost immediately that whatever came next might involve them.

I remember sitting alone in that hospital waiting room, watching the world change in real time.

And I remember what happened in the days that followed, when for just a little while, we stopped looking so hard for the things that separated us and remembered what connected us.

Twenty-five years later, I wish we remembered that part a little better too.

So maybe that’s my challenge today.

Remember the people we lost.

Remember the people who ran toward danger.

Remember the day everything changed.

But also look up.

Wave at your neighbor.

Say hello to the stranger you normally walk past.

Acknowledge the person in the other boat.

Remember that we need each other.

Never forget what happened on September 11, 2001.

And maybe, just maybe, never forget who we were to each other afterward.

Whether you remember 9/11 firsthand or learned about it later, what do you think we should make sure we never lose sight of?