You know where you were. You know what you were doing and what grades your children were in. Your age and occupation at the time.
I remember my desk and office layout at Atlantic Luggage Company, where I was Senior Marketing Director. I was conversing with George Patterson about a friend's brithday. This particular morning, chatting with George over a cup of tea, was just like any other day. Yet, distinct and to forever be a day impressed in my memory to such degree that the slightest details of the day's events - the CEO calling the employees together, watching TV in the upstairs conference room, the 40 mile drive home and seeing the sky full of fighter jets circling Pittsburgh, clicking back and forth between NBC and BBC, weeping, being in a state of horror and unknown, making all those calls - yes, that is a day I remember vividly. September 11, 2001.
I am all about my 'to-do' lists. Love to make them. Love to re-create them. Spend so much time managing them, shuffling the priority of them. Love when the last item gets a horizontal pen line crossed through it. Love to start new ones. Simply put, punch lists work for me. They are in my Outlook, on loose Post-it notes, in my phone, and on random pages in my various and many journals. They are scattered by my bed, in the office, in my car. I love how concrete and dynamic my to do lists are. Really, my life is a fluid, on-going space of to-do lists. I am not alone. Call it Dreams, Call it Aspirations, Call it Places Yet to see. Call it Someday. That is the forum of how I operate in life. We all have our version of 'to-do' lists.
I am left with honor and saddness as I remember the lives that were lost that day. None of whom I knew. All of whom I am forever and profoundly related to. Mothers, Fathers, Parents, Children, Lovers, Friends, Colleagues. People. They were simply people going about their own to do list. Just like any other day.
Eight years later some want to move on. Some want to forget. The majority will honor and take pause. Each person has their own frame of reference and point of view on the extraordinary collective loss, grief and shock of that day and its aftermath. Who knows what would have become of the greatness of each of those persons lost? Who knows what vast possibilites each of them had on their to do list? I am left with silence thinking of the untold enormity.
Drive Your Bargain,
Anne, Car Buying Advocate
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