9/11 Twelve Years Later

It's been quite sometime since I last posted. A year actually! Where does that time go?

Hubby has been home a year now and since then life is slowly but surely getting back to normal. Although, I truly think we live with a new and different normal than we did 15 months ago. Time spent together as a family is more precious, we have less time for the "not so important things" and I think both hubby and I have felt more of a pull to make a difference in the lives of veterans and their families in our community.

Since hubby came home last year, I had the opportunity to visit the Pentagon to speak out for our State Beyond the Yellow Ribbon Program and how our program could be emulated throughout the nation and benefit so many other states and communities. While there this February, we visited the National 9/11 Memorial which is outside the Pentagon and we had the chance to visit the 9/11 Memorial Chapel inside the Pentagon.

I will admit, I am a sap. A lot of things make me cry, but not very often war memorials. I think I look at them with curiosity and want to learn all the history and  facts about them, sometimes this makes me miss the larger meaning. Well, that was not the case at the Pentagon Memorial Chapel.

I was visiting the Pentagon Memorial Chapel with the MN National Guard team I traveled with, one of them a soldier who has deployed since 9/11. The people who were working in the area of the Pentagon where the Chapel now is took a direct hit on 9/11. You can look out the window and image seeing a plane coming right for you. The chapel is quiet and somber, yet graceful in its tribute to those who died that day. Many who died were servicemembers, just like my friend visiting with me and that made it very personal for me. The Pentagon itself is a living tribute to our Armed Forces and so many quilts and paintings honoring 9/11 were given to the Pentagon that they rotate out the displays. It is amazing.

Outside at the National 9/11 Memorial are benches.  Each signifying a person who was lost on 9/11, either in the Pentagon or on the jet and those lost are put in rows according to birth year. Children to adults were lost that day and it is overwhelming to see and imagine that someone the same age as you was lost in those awful attacks.

Before my recent visit to DC, 9/11 always felt like something that happened to our nation, not to me, even though it affected me because I married a solider on 9/29/2001. After visiting the Pentagon Memorials and now this Twelfth Anniversary of those horrible attacks is here, I can feel that this has personally impacted me. I never really understood that, now I do.  I reflect on all the wonderful friendships I have made because of this one event, I wouldn't have been able to meet all these amazing kindred spirits without the deployments we have endured. I reflect on the lives lost and the lives changed forever because of the attacks. Most of all, I am grateful for what matters most, my family and our freedom.

To learn more about the National 9/11 Memorial and the 9/11 Memorial Chapel at the Pentagon please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Memorial