Remembering Them: 25 Years Later

Twenty-five years later, September 11 remains a day that asks us to pause and remember the people we lost. Twenty-five years is a long time, and yet for the families, friends, colleagues, and communities who lost someone that day, time doesn't make the loss disappear. It becomes part of the fabric of a life. The world moved forward, as it does, but the people who were taken that morning remain connected to that day in our collective memory.

It is important that we remember them as people, not simply as a number or as part of a historical event. They had families, friends, coworkers, routines, plans and ordinary lives that were interrupted without warning. They were parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors. They had places to go and people expecting them to come home. They woke up that morning living an ordinary day, never knowing that it would become anything but ordinary.

When we look back at September 11, the images are so familiar that it can be easy to forget how personal that day was. Behind every photograph was a person. Behind every name was a family. Behind every empty chair was someone who was deeply loved. Remembering September 11 means remembering those individual lives and recognizing that each person left behind a story that mattered.

I was teaching on September 11th. I saw the planes hit the towers on the news before I left for work that morning. And then I stood in front of a room of second graders with no idea what, if anything, I was supposed to say. I wasn’t sure I was the right person to explain any of it. So at first I did what felt safest: I carried on as if it were any other day, so they would have whatever normalcy looked like for them.

I remember the contrast of that day: knowing that something enormous and devastating had happened while standing in a classroom filled with children who still needed an adult to guide them. They needed structure. They needed reassurance. They needed some version of the ordinary, even when the adults around them knew that the world had changed.

At the time, I didn't have the perspective to understand what that moment would mean years later. I was simply trying to navigate an unimaginable day and protect a group of young children from carrying more fear than they could understand.

When I remember September 11, I think about the people we know about whose lives were lost. The people we lost were not just part of an event that happened 25 years ago. They were living, breathing people with people who loved them. Their lives mattered before that morning, and they matter when we remember them today.

Twenty-five years can create distance, but it should not create indifference. There are people who were old enough to remember that morning clearly, and there are now young adults who weren't born yet when it happened. That makes remembering even more important. As time passes, the responsibility to tell the stories becomes greater. We have to make sure that the people who were lost don't become simply names in a history book or faces in photographs we recognize but no longer truly see.

So on this 25th anniversary, I want to continue to remember the people. I want to remember the lives they lived, the people they loved, the families who had to continue without them, and the countless people whose lives were forever changed that day.

And I want to remember that ordinary Tuesday.

Because that is what makes the loss so profound. They were living their lives. They had somewhere to be. They had plans. They expected there would be another day.

For those who didn't get that next day, we remember. We remember because they were here.

We remember because they mattered. And 25 years later, we still carry their memory with us.