[Mkguild] Memories of 9/11 - Terrible Silence

[christian okane]

Has it been ten years since the terrible attack on 9/11? I still find it
hard to believe. I think many people do. I still cannot understand why
people commit such evil upon each other. I think I never will. I have many
memories of that day. I remember staring in disbelief at the tv screen. I
remember standing on my front lawn and clearly seeing the smoke from the
fires. I remember all my friends frantically online trying to contact me to
be sure I was still alive. One still sticks in my mind 'Is he still alive?"
I remember the large funerals at the cemetery not 3 miles from where I sit
and write this now. There were a lot of funerals that fall, many with an
empty casket. I think of that day and an anger still fills me a decade late
r. I wrote the following short piece while struggling to come to terms with
9/11. It was written in a burst of inspiration, anger and pain




   In memory of all those who went out and will never be coming back.


   Christian Okane

 

 

 

 

 

   12 September 2001
 
                          That terrible silence
                        ---------------------------
 
  It's a simple structure that stands across the street from my apartment.
Two stories tall and made of deep, red brick and gray stone. Two wide roll
up garage doors stood below a sign that proudly read "RESCUE."
 
 Two engines had called that place home, polished and cleaned by proud
firemen. I can still picture their faces now, smiling, laughing, talking,
cleaning or repairing something. I even watched with amusement as a
television crew filmed this company of New York's bravest. These firemen
were famous, they always seemed to be rescuing people from crumbling
buildings, collapsed scaffolding or swimming into a sunken boat to rescue a
trapped crewman. They were called the bravest of the brave.
 
   I had long ago lost my amazement at what they did. All I knew was that I
always seemed to be jolted awake at the most foul ho
 urs by screaming horns and wailing sirens as red and blue lights danced
across my ceiling. Driving away all hopes of sleep. Now that it's gone I
miss it so.
 
   Now I stand at my window looking at the people who lay flowers and
wreaths where the engines once rested. Where I had stood countless times
talking and chatting with the firemen. Brave souls who had gone out and will
never come back.
 
   Sometimes even now I wake up in the middle of the night hoping, praying
to hear the wail of sirens and the scream of the horns. Instead all I hear
is that silence.
 
   That terrible silence.
 

 



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