story697.xml

story697.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-05-31

September 11, 2001 will be a day that i never forget and will forever be linked to. At that time, my husband and I were living in California. We both woke up around 7:30am with a terrible feeling in our guts and neither one of us could fall back to sleep. A few hours later I was getting ready for an appointment when the phone rang. It was my brother calling to tell me that someone was attacking the towers in New York and a lot of people had been killed. I had no idea what he was talking about and told him to stop calling me about stuff like this because it wasn't funny. I then left for my appointment. I started to feel really dizzy and sick as I was driving and turned on the radio to keep my ming off the uneasy feeling. When I turned on the radio, it became too apparent that what my brother had told me was actually true and there had been 4 highjacked planes, 3 of them slamming into buildings the other crashing in Pennsylvania. I listened as people called into the radio stations giving their accounts of what was happening and the chaos that surrounded them. I got to my appointment still unaware of just how bad that day was going to get for me and my family. I got home about an hour later and my husband was watching the news. About and hour later we got the phone call that was to forever change our lives. My mother-in-law was on the other end telling my husband that our sister-in-law (my husbands brothers wife) was missing. She was supposed to have taken the flight a half an hour later than flight 93 but nobody had heard from her. Her cell phone had not been working during her trip to the East Coast. We had them paging her in the airport for her to call home, but nothing. Finally my father-in-law looked up the flight itineraries and found that the later flight was the exact same route as Flight 93 and we knew in our hearts that she must have gotten on Flight 93 on standby. A few hours later my mother-in-law called to confirm just that. Christine had gotten on Flight 93 and as we had seen on tv, not one of the passengers had survived that crash. It was so devastating and heartbreaking. The strange thing is that Christine had actually changed her flight several times on the 11th before finally getting on Flight 93 standby. Christine married my brother-in-law on June 2, 2001, and she had just had her 32nd birthday in August and now she was gone! Christine was such a great person. She had a wonderful heart and soul. We know that she is looking after us and is our Angel. At her memorial service, which took place a few weeks after the attacks, countless people talked about how she touched their lives and what she meant to them. I never realized how many people were blessed to have had the opportunity to meet her and have her in their lives. Christine will forever be missed but never forgotten. She was an inspiration to all of us and lived her life to the fullest and always tried to see the good in every situation. I guess now we just try to live day by day and try to stay positive and remember all of the joy and happiness that Chris brought to our lives. The hard part is actually coping with the fact that she is never coming home. I'm sure in time our hearts will heal, but it will be a long and difficult process. I don't think that any of us will ever feel complete again, but we have to be strong for each other and remember that Chris is with us in spirit. She will forever be loved!