story3137.xml

story3137.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I was awakened at 6:15 Pacific Time, as usual, by the clock radio. It was set to KLOS-FM, the Mark & Briam radio show. The first word I heard as I struggled out of sleep were DJ Brian saying..."I thought when the first plane hit the building it was an accident, but when the second plane hit..." I sat bolt upright and said to my husband "Something's happened" and ran to the living room and turned on the TV.
Both towers were burning as we watched in disbelief. My husband didn't want my 8 and 11 year old daughters to see, but I knew there was no way of keeping this from them. It was a beautiful clear warm September morning. Later I went to Mass and tried to make sense of it all. I still can't.
At work all day my two co-workers and I huddled around a 6-inch black and white TV and watched. I called my sister in Denver just to make sure she was OK.
It was horribly frustrating to watch all this devastation and be so far away. Everything looked normal here but nobody felt normal. There was nothing for us to do but watch TV and grieve.I held on as best I could but on Friday I burst into tears and sobbed for an hour. After that we stopped watching the TV so much.