Sept 11…I still remember how I felt 5 years ago. The feelings are stagnant all year until I see the images and the tributes flood the television and airwaves. So why was I spooked? A series of coincidences occurred:

I was called at 0530 and informed there was a urinalysis: There was a urinalysis on that day, but furthermore, we never have UA’s on Mondays…typically Tuesdays…

I arrived at work just in time to find out that there was an observance going on. When I turned around, SSG Caprio was there: I was just returning from leave, so I had no clue that the observance was at that time. SSG Caprio was the first person I ran to when I found out that the towers had been hit and that my mother may have been in the building. She calmed me down and made sure that precautions were put in place to insure that I didn’t get in my car and drive home to NY. I cried when I saw her and she held my hand as the observance continued.
I randomly looked at my cell phone for the time…it was 0906 hours: Will called me at 0906 on that day to inform me that the tower had been hit. When it dawned on me that he wasn’t joking, I came to the realization that my mom had just started working there and that she never gave us her new number.

I tried to make a call on my cell phone and the message said ‘All circuits are busy, please try your call again later”: That was the same message that I got when I tried to call my mother, sisters and brother to find out if they were safe. Because they were all on a family network and the communication in the city was down, I constantly got that message. I had made several calls using that phone already, and I had just got off the phone with my mother when I tried to make another call.

So given those similar events, I looked up to the sky and said ‘okay…you win…I’m spooked!’.

Just to give you all some additional information, my mother was working at WTC, but unbeknownst to me, WTC consisted of 7 buildings, not just the towers (so much for being a New Yorker!). My mom was in building 7 and watched everything unfold before her eyes. She saw the bodies, felt the flames, heard the sirens followed by the eerie silence when the towers fell. I received a call from Will shortly after 2pm. He said he saw my mom on TV crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. There were close to half a million people on the bridge…how did he see her? She was wearing a bright yellow suit that day…a suit that I am sure she hasn’t worn in 5 years. It wasn’t until I got home that afternoon that I was able to see the total devistation of the day’s events. I sat on the couch and did not move for 5 hours. I didn’t eat and worse than that, I didn’t sleep. The images of the planes hitting the towers and the towers crumbling to nothing was burned in my head. I did manage to call my best friend Erica to attempt to wish her a ‘happy birthday’.

I have never been spooked about this before. Anniversaries such as these have a weird way of letting their presence be known.