It is a well-known fact that my most favourite metropolis in the world is one New York City.  Part of my soul resides there, and I have long debated the wish to have, once I have moved on, at least a third of my ashes scattered in the shoe shops of this very city… just so somehow, I will always be amongst my favourite accessories, in my favourite place.

Of course, we all remember today the events of twelve years ago, and as much as I wanted to write on my experience and thoughts on the subject, I was fearful I would appear to be passé.  I have decided to take the risk, and write anyway.

I was in New York a couple of months before that fateful day – carefree, partying up a hurricane, sitting in bars and restaurants until way past their normal closing times.  I had such a wonderfully fun time, that a good friend of mine said as I was off to the airport to fly home, that she needed to take me everywhere twice – once to show me a good, entertaining establishment, and the next time for me to apologise to management for my behaviour on round one. 

I was young then (and oh, so thin!), and whilst I was still young when I returned that December for Christmas with family, I remember so clearly looking at the Manhattan skyline whilst crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, and somehow, with the missing towers, I felt older, more weathered, and slightly weakened by the sorrow felt for the thousands of individuals affected by such an incredible show of human cruelty on that clear Autumn day.

Manhattan changed that day, and so did we all. 

Most of the people I know, knew someone who was either there, or knew someone who knew someone who was there; and all of the people I know remember where they were, and who they were with when the news reached their ears.  I remember madly dashing to get hold of my family and some friends, to no avail, and days of no contact followed.  Excruciating for me, yet nothing compared to what others went through.

I have watched so many 9/11 documentaries in the last twelve years, as so many of us have – literally fascinated by the footage, and devastated by the suffering experienced.  I have new respect for fire fighters post that day; I have respect for the triumph of the human spirit, which revealed itself in individuals who somehow escaped, and managed to save others; but mostly, I have respect for humanity as a whole, as that day proved to all of us how, in the face of tragedy and extreme adversity, humans literally pull together and help each other as much as their physical strength allows them to.

That December the feeling in Manhattan was so different to any previous visit, and any visit since.  I remember getting a take-out pizza very late one evening (you guessed it, on the way home from a wine bar), and printed on the top of the pizza box was the American flag with the words, “We will never forget”.  How completely apt.

Whilst I do not want to dwell on the negative, I am of the belief that those pizza-box-words were some of the best I have heard since that day – “we will never forget” - nor should we.

Remembering and honouring all those who fell that day, their families, and their friends. 

Truly, we will never forget.