I have no memory of September 10, 2001.

That was before I knew everything would change.

I woke up on September 11, 2001. Turned on the radio.

That was before all of the radio towers fell.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

When my brain absorbed enough of what the radio announcers were saying, I turned on my television.

That was before the first tower fell.

I called my boyfriend, who was staying at our friend’s apartment on Staten Island at the time.

That was before the phone lines were overwhelmed and stopped working.

What is happening? Are you okay? I can’t get across to Manhattan, he said. They turned the ferries back. Try to make your way to me, I said. However long it takes.

That was before they cut off access below 14th street, where I was staying in graduate student housing, to anyone who wasn’t a resident & could show proof of address.

We stayed on the phone as long as possible. On my television, the first tower began to crumble.

What is happening? Are you seeing this? Yes. I don’t know what this is. I love you. I love you, too. Please just get here. Walk across the Verrazono Bridge if you have to. Just get here. Okay. I love you. Be safe.

It occurred to me at some point that morning, a vague sense through the numbness, that, on a normal day, I would be at work by now. My office was within walking distance.

That was before I knew no one would go to work that day. So I got dressed and walked out of my apartment.

I walked down to Sixth Ave, where my office was. People were standing in the middle of the street, staring up. I stopped. I looked up. There it was, the second tower, standing alone, without its twin.

That was before…

We stood and stared. Things fell from the building.

That was before we realized those were not things, but people.

We couldn’t move. Any of us. We just bore witness.

And then. Our hearts collectively sank. The second tower. It was falling. Crumbling. As if it was made of gingerbread, not reinforced steel.

That was before we knew how many people were inside (but we knew there were people inside).

My jaw dropped.

That was before I knew what I was breathing in, what was making its way through the air from those burning, crumbled towers.

There was nothing left to witness other than smoke. Those smoke clouds. They hung in the air for weeks.

That was before we knew just how many souls’ ashes were mingled in those smoke clouds.

I made my way to my office. My boss told me to call my parents. I hadn’t even thought to. I called my parents. I put the phone down. What now? I don’t know, he said. I really don’t know.

We waited. Eventually our building was designated a Comfort Station.

That was before we knew how few were left to comfort.

At some point, there was no point to me sitting in my office. The phones were dead. No one was coming in. I made my way to a friend’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. We exchanged notes on which friends we had heard from, and which we had not.

We sat and watched the news, numb. Just absolutely fucking numb.

Eventually, my boyfriend met us there (we couldn’t meet at my apartment because of the non-resident ban below 14th Street). He had found someone to drive him across the Verrazano Bridge, which connects Staten Island to Brooklyn, and I don’t even remember how he then got to Manhattan from Brooklyn.

Maybe that was before they shut down the subways.

What do we do, I asked my friend? Give blood, I guess, she said. They set up a station at the convention center. We walked over, the small group of us that had managed to gather together in her apartment.

That was before we knew there was no one to give blood to.

They were all just gone. Just like that. Gone.

The silence fell. No planes. No vehicles. No radio. Cell service mostly not working. People shocked into silence, wandering the streets, posting missing person signs.

That was before we knew those signs were mostly useless.

Still, they stayed up for days, weeks, months. They became memorials.

Every evening, people would gather in Union Square and light candles for the lost and missing, weep openly, and just be in the moment, grief-stricken and clinging to each other for comfort.

And the first-responders. My god, the first-responders. Working through their grief to search through the rubble.

That was before they started dying from complications of what they were breathing in. Before their medical bills piled up, and compensation got stuck in committee after committee.

Hillary was there, too.

Even Rudolph Giuliani was less horrible than usual, and, as Mayor, tried to reassure us that we would be okay.

The widows. The orphans. They were there.

The lost souls. They were there, too. A palpable presence.

My city. My New York. Broken. Haunted.

We were all broken and living with ghosts.

It is hard, still, to put into words what happened on that day, in the following weeks, every year on that date since.

It has taken me seventeen years of staring at a blank screen. Thinking, no, not yet. Not this year. Maybe next year.

When I went back to my graduate writing classes, when we realized we had to do functional things again, we asked our instructor–does anything matter now?

We can’t put this into words. We are writers, but we have no words for this. How do we exist in this world as it is now? As people, and as writers?

You just do, she said. When the words come, the words will come. They might not. That’s okay, too. Today we just sit with our grief.

But does writing even matter? How could it? Shouldn’t we just all become firefighters, doctors, soldiers?

You are the memory keepers, she said. One day, when you are ready, you will write the things that people will read to remember how it was. That is important.

And so we sat with our grief.

That September, we couldn’t sleep. We couldn’t eat. We just wandered around trying to be functional human beings while carrying our collective grief. We wept openly and often. We had mini panic attacks on the daily. We comforted our friends. We protected our Muslim neighbors. We went to vigils. Eventually, we went to protests.

We lived, for those who could not. That was our job now. To be better. To live better. For them.

When the planes were back in the air, every time one crossed into our airspace, we shuddered. We waited. Not this time. Not again. Okay. Carry on. Take another step forward.

That October, for the first time, sprawled on a warm rock in the middle of Central Park, I closed my eyes and let my city lull me to sleep. That was the first time I felt like I could let my guard down for a few minutes.

That November, my friends and I gathered together and rented a cabin in the Catskills. None of us were ready to get on a plane again to fly home for Thanksgiving. It was a gorgeous Indian summer, unseasonably warm and delicious, and we cooked together, hiked together, healed together.

It still felt wrong to feel joy, but it also felt good, and necessary.

For the first ten years, September 11 hit us full in the face. Grief ballooning, filling us with every awful memory of that day.

For the next five, the date snuck up on us unaware, and then we were once again floored by what we had been witness to, and how much time had passed.

Last year might have been the first time I didn’t realize what day it was until mid-afternoon.

It still hurts. That kind of deep trauma never goes away. There are more and more humans on this planet who were born after the events of September 11, 2001 took place.

We are the bearers of history. We are the reminders, the rembemberers.

And we have not yet gotten it right, honoring those who have passed.

We are here, now, in this world as we know it today.

Once again being called to put our bodies on the line, but this time against our own president.

I don’t even know what to say about that, other than: carry on. Do the work. We have to do the work.

I used to work at this place that was next to a school. Every day I would hear the cacophony of joy that was kids at recess. It always astonished me, just how loud and how joyful these kids could be. Kids with only a vague knowledge, if any, of the events of 9/11, which happened well before they were born.

Kids with their own deep traumas experienced in their own short lives. Kids who had experienced loss, grief, pain. Kids who had to worry about existing in a world where the color of their skin put a target on their backs.

And yet, here they were, full of the special joy and hope that is recess.

Fred Roger’s mother once told him,  “Always look for the helpers. There’s always someone who is trying to help.”

These kids gave me hope for the future, and a reason to keep doing every possible thing to live into a better world, to take one small action of kindness every single day, to always be that person trying to help, and to always, always make time for joy.

That is how I would honor, remember, and serve.

These were those kids: