Today was a beautiful September day. Brilliant sunlight in a cool, blue-sky morning. Just like the morning of September 11 2001, when the world changed.

Now it’s been 23 years and we still gather to remember, still remember in the little moments of the day. How today was like that day that was so different from other days. A day we remember in fine detail: where we were, what we were doing, who we were with, what we had planned, what happened to those plans.

I just packed up the big thick book that has lived behind my computer since being published. It’s the book compiling all the remembrances of everyone killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11. Most have small photos and some remembrances from family or a co-worker.

As I picked it up to pack it, I opened it and flipped through and read the names and remembrances of the two people I’d known through dancing. I didn’t know them well, but I knew them. And they knew each other. One was on a plane and the other on top of a tower. I remembered them and the discussion amongst the dancing community about how to respond to this violent act.

Now it’s 23 years later and we don’t have that before life of never imagining such a thing could happen. We can only work towards a world that won’t do it again. We can only remember their names.

As I do every year, I pause to remember the day, the two I knew, the thousands I didn’t, and all of us left behind in a different world.

REMEMBER

911, quilt by Mary Beth Frezon, 2001. Photo by Pearl Yee Wong of the Michigan State University Museum