Today on the 11th anniversary of the attack on America I find I have no cohesive thoughts.  Yet I can not let the day go by without saying something.  Maybe it’s a day for each of us to have our own thoughts and our own memories. Surely this day is not as difficult for those of us who lost no immediate family members, no close friends, no acquaintances as it is for those who did.  But we were all changed that day.

We all lost some of our complacency, some of our tenacity, our feeling of being immune to the sort of hate we’d all seen on TV in news reports from some other part of the world.  We lost that safe feeling.  But only for a moment.  Because even as the second plane hit, before we realized the magnitude of what was happening, we were already gathering ourselves.  I remember telling my staff that “they might be able to kill some of us, but they can’t get us all.”  And reassuring them that we were safe there at work, encouraging them to check on their family and friends, letting them hang together is a quiet group gaining comfort and strength from each other.

We all changed that day, and change is hard.  But not so hard that we can’t all take a moment to remember those whose lives changed the most; the family and friends of the almost 3000 people that died.  And especially those 3000 people themselves.  For them, change was the most profound.

We are strong.  And we will never forget.