I wrote this last year while my husband was deployed to Afghanistan, but still hold sjust as true:

As a sixteen year old junior in high school I didn’t realize how one day would shape the rest of my life.  I didn’t know then that what had happened would become the life I was to be a part of.  I didn’t understand its true significance.  Like others who watched the planes fly into the New York Coty Trade Centers, I had a hard time processing what was going on.  Why were they saying we were under attack?  Who was attacking us?  Did this mean war?  Why were civilians targeted?  Why? Why? Why?

                Although it has been (ten) years I still remember everything about that day.  I remember getting the news about a plane hitting the tower before the first bell rang at 7:20 A.M.  I remember trying to do math as the TV remained on, but muted in the corner constantly drawing my attention as news bulletins and updated flashed across the screen and I remember the gasp and the deadly silence of the class when the second plane hit.  The bells still rang and my day went on, but classes didn’t. 

                Second hour Spanish class I was lucky enough to sit next to my best friend Zach.  My teacher said there was no way she could teach when our nation was in such a crises and the whole hour I remember Zach and I sat hand in hand as we watched the towers fall.  I cried; we all cried.  It was so sad to know the thousands who perished.  It hurt hearing people frantically calling into the news stations searching for their loved ones.  It hurt because the safety our nation had always felt had been destroyed within a couple of hours.

                Classes crept by and the halls were filled with people crying for people they knew in New York.  As word hit that another plane had hit the Pentagon there was no debating that this was indeed an attack.  Who would do this to us though?  Teachers tried to comfort us, but they were just as disoriented as the rest of us.  No one had answers and no one knew what to do.

                (Ten) years have elapsed and that tragic day has fallen from the minds of many.  What was so catastrophic and unexplainable had to many people become just another story for the text book.  On the anniversary the hero’s and fallen are remembered, but it is now talked about as if it had happened decades ago.  As if we were not still fighting the same war, the war my husband is now in Afghanistan fighting for.  I know (ten) years before I never realized how personally involved I would become in all of this.  How close this war would touch my heart.

(Ten) years later and I still don’t have any new answers, just new information as my husband writes, “I can’t help but question why we are here.  I know we are trying to help these people gain freedom and a better life, but they hate us.  They hate what we stand for.  They hate what we believe in…then I think of all the innocents that will ultimately be helped by us and I am ashamed for thinking of the easy way out.”  Nine years later and we still don’t know who is friend and who is foe as he continues in a different letter, “It is a land destitute of joy.  It’s a place of heat, pain, and sorrow.  The children are raised on lies of hatred and anger and the adults thrive off of death and terror.  We’ve come to this place to help build it up, to try and give these people a boost to live happier more fulfilling lives and they smile and give thanks and as soon as we start to walk away they continue to make instruments of our destruction.”

I never would have guessed that the sixteen year old girl watching these images would become the wife of a soldier who fought to protect my freedom.   Married to a man who fought to protect the countries freedom and to secure a safety we lost on September 11, 2001.  My husband is my hero and an honorable man because although he sometimes cannot see his contributions to a definite outcome, he believes in what he is doing, which is why he has pledges his life to the United States Army.  

This September 11^th is very different for me as I realized more acutely that there has been more blood spilt that just on that fateful day and a couple of weeks ago I feared my husband’s name would be added to the list of those who dies fighting for this cause when he was wounded.  As he says though, he still has “fight left and a work to do” and he excitedly returned to duty as soon as he recovered. 

I never would have imagined how long this war would last and how much it affects each and every one of us whether we realize it or not, so I beseech each of us to recognize the war that still goes on around us and to remember to give the reverence and respect for those who will never return home to their family because of terrorists.