How I remember the day that changed us all...

Everything went great that year after dealing with January. Chet and I grew closer and closer and by August he had proposed. For the most part the first half of that year was great.

Then came September. I had just moved in with Chet and his roommates and all was good. Chet was set to go on another underway and I had a new job lined up. That Tuesday morning started off as any other morning that Chet had left on an underway...

We got up early that morning and said our good byes, we had spent enough time apart to know that everything would be fine for the next month and a half. He said good bye and I started to get up and get ready for my first day as the Sales Manager at a local hotel. Little did any of us know what the day had in store for us. It was just another September 11th to most of us.

I can remember being in the lobby of the hotel as the maintenance manager came running in pushing a television on a cart and then jumped up on a chair to pull a cable drop out of the ceiling "You have to see this!" he yelled as he connected the television to the cable and turned it on. There in front of us was this terrible image of one of the Twin Towers with smoke pouring out of it. We all know how the next few hours went.

I left for lunch that day and found two messages on my phone from my friend Leigh, she had just moved to Groton, CT with her new husband (Chet's old roommate) and had also seen the images that plastered every television station that morning. She was scared, I was too...her husband was out to sea with Chet on a fast attack submarine that was only supposed to be gone for 4-6 weeks and now this happened, we didn't know what this would mean for them. I called her back and we met at the apartment that Chet and I shared with his friends Dave and Eric. Dave too was on the USS Toledo with Chet and Tim and Eric had reported for work that morning as usual. I got to the answering machine to find no messages from anybody. Leigh and I sat and watched the images over and over on television.

The weeks that followed the episodes of 9/11 are mainly a blur. Leigh and I bonded over lots of alchohol and thanks to our friend Holly, we made it through a bad time, created our own candle light vigil with white candles stuck into Budweiser bottles. The boat came home just a few days later than planned and for the most part, everything went back to normal. Holly and Shawn had their wedding as planned, without the delay that those terrible people tried to put on it.

It was in the face of this tragedy that we all found our own outlets for pain. Each and every person dealt with all that the events brought and how it changed our own individual worlds. No two people had the same story, and no two people had the same feelings. We have all moved on and taken from that day different lessons.

The start of the hardest year...

When I think about the hardest year I think I have ever been through, my first thoughts are really of the first day of that year...

It was January 2001 and I had just returned from spending New Year's in Dallas with my cousin celebrating his 21st birthday. I haven't thought about that trip in a long time, and it wasn't really where I was going to go when I sat down to write this part. But, I guess that reflecting on the past brings about things a little at a time.

I remember being at Doug's house on New Year's eve with him and all his friends. We were drinking and partying and just having a blast. They were a fun bunch to be around. I remember looking out the window that night and seeing the snow falling, and I mean FALLING! We ran outside and they all began to have a snowball fight. What fun it was. I never would have thought then that we would be burrying Doug just 3 years later. He and I weren't that close, but close enough that I was beyond upset when he died. Pictures are all I have left now, I keep them tucked away in a box and I come across them every now and then. Oh Doug, how I hope you are doing well now. You are truly missed down here.

After the trip to Texas I came home to Connecticut to find out that a good friend of mine's father had passed away and we would be laying him to rest the following weekend. Steve's Dad was like a big cuddly teddy bear. I ended up at the bar the night before the funeral looking to dull the pain. It was the third funeral I would attend in just two years, numbers that were too big for a 21 year old. It was that night that I met Chet. He was just home from a six month deployment and neither of us were looking for a relationship. Little did we know that just a few short months later we would be engaged and then be married a year and a half later.

I haven't thought about how hard that year was for me. I also haven't thought about how that year changed my life so much. Why is it that good memories bring you around to bad ones, and those bring you around to good ones and so goes the circle over and over again?

I wish I could take them all and make them all good, and make the bad ones go away. But, I guess those are the ones that develop our character, the ones that teach us who we really are and the ones that mold us into who we will become.

I am trying to remember how it all went...

Starting To Look Back

I found myself chatting with an old friend today whom I haven't really talked to in a long time. We were good friends once, lost track and thanks to one of those social networking sites have been able to catch up again. It was during this conversation that I had mentioned reading his wife's blog about losing her mother and that I knew what it was like, since I had lost my Dad in 2001. I mentioned that in my renewed loved for writing I hadn't "gone there yet", and it was then that he told me that when I'm ready I might find that it's my best stuff yet. As the night as progressed I find myself looking back on that year and how hard it all was and I realize that he just might be right. Writing about what happened to me and what I went through during that time might be good for me, I might find some deep writing that I didn't know I had, I might also help somebody else.

So, I am going to start looking back on those times and start to dig them up again. As hard as it might be, the events of that year alone could fill a book for me. In just that one year I laid a friend to rest, I met my now husband, I watched the world change, I lost my Dad and I realized that my sister and I will never be close again.

I hope that I do my memories justice with my writing, and I think that he's right when he told me that I just might find some of my best work yet.

We'll see...