Spending the morning at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum triggered many different emotions within me that I wasn’t expecting. Going in, I wasn’t sure what to expect from myself. I remember only being five years old when the tragedy occurred. I simply remember seeing the burning towers on the news, the frantic and shocked reactions of my parents and then being told that I wasn’t going to school that day. Growing up and learning about what happened, I could never imagine how it must have felt being in New York that horrible day. Now, having lived in the city a few months and going over the events again, where they actually occurred, I was overcome with an eerie feeling combined with sorrow and anger. Looking at the pictures of everyone that died that day and being able to read about who they were and what their families had to say about them, left me even more sorrowful. So many innocent people with futures and full of life were gone in a matter of a few hours. It was so personal and yet I still couldn’t imagine what they must have been feeling right before they died that day. Looking at the personal artifacts that belonged to these people, now in a museum, added to my uneasiness. That wallet must have traveled a million places with that person who died that day, and that telephone must have held many a personal conversation for the person had it. It made me ask so many questions. How did they loose it that day? If they had it with them, would they have been able to get out faster or tell someone they loved them before they died? Did they have it with them when they died? Did someone else have it with them? What was that person doing before they realized what was going on? It really made me stop and look at my everyday actions and think about how precious every moment really is. Continuing through the museum, looking at photos of the city that day and the people’s reactions transported me somehow briefly to them that day. Seeing places I recognized in those photos added to the weight of the reality of what happened. With this is mind, going through the timeline of what happened that day and seeing the pictures of the men who hijacked the planes made me sick. As I watched the airport surveillance video of them passing security, I become angrier. Looking into their eyes in those photos I asked myself over and over again what every person asks at some point: how can a person find it in themselves to do something so unimaginably horrible? Don’t they have a conscious? I will never be able to understand it.

I was not prompted to take pictures like I usually am when going to museums and like many other people were prompted to do. I was too upset and had too many questions. I only took a few photos of a piece of art that really spoke to me. It was a wall covered in tiles, each painted a different shade of blue in watercolors. The tiles surround the words “No day shall erase you from the memory of time,” by Virgil. The blue, watercolor tiles were painted by Spencer Finch. They are his attempt to try and remember what shade of blue the sky was on that day. Reading about this, the idea that everyone has their own distinct memory of that day, each one different, but each connecting back to that collective memory of what happened and how it has brought us together as a country for at least one day and one cause really stayed with me. The quote by Virgil is forged out of remaining steel from the World Trade Center by the artist Tom Joyce. Once again, the idea that these letters that form a quote that brings hope, which were created by steel becoming bendable by fire, the same way the towers were made collapsible, had an odd beautiful irony to it. It reinforced the idea that even in the darkest of times, we can find hope in one another and in the future. The idea that we can grow as individuals and a society from something as horrible as 9/11.

Walking back outside after going through the museum, I stood by the waterfalls that are now there in place of the twin towers. I looked around and couldn’t help but notice what a beautiful day it was outside and how peaceful the trees looked surrounding the waterfalls. Once again, I was struck by the eerie feeling that I was standing in the same spot where thousands of people ran for their lives, courageous men and women helped save the people around them and where many beautiful and innocent people died that day back in 2001.