Remembering: A Tribute in Lights, A Tribute in Song

I just didn't have it in me to write about the date this year. I wrote this post last year and nothing much has changed since. The new World Trade Center is now the tallest building in the City, but over 3000 people are still gone. It's easy to be out of sight, out of mind... just don't be that way today.


September 11, 2012
Eleven years ago today, nearly 3000 people woke up and went about their morning. They would not go to sleep that night.

They say time heals all wounds...but maybe it doesn't. Ask most people in the NYC area about September 11, 2001 and you will still see eyes well up with tears as they try to explain what being in, or around the city was like for them in the first few months after.

I watched on TV as the second plane hit. I had a doctor's appointment at 10:15 that morning, not long after the first tower fell. As I drove up the hill in town, I knew I would see the skyline of Manhattan. What I saw was more smoke than I had ever seen in my life. And where there were two towers, there now was one. But not for long.

We all know what happened in the next few days, but unless you were here...you couldn't feel the desperation, you couldn't smell the towers burn, you couldn't taste the fear. The fear of what had happened, what could happen and what we didn't know about what happened. And I was 10 miles outside of the city. For friends and family in the city, it was almost unbearable. Very few people who lived in New Jersey made it home that night...everything was closed down. Everyone who worked in the city walked with friends and co-workers over the East River to Brooklyn or Queens to find a bed wherever they could. Thousands and thousands walking in silence, some still covered in ash...walking to a place called normal.

That place no longer existed.

On the six month anniversary of the attack, two banks of lights were set up near the site of the World Trade Center. From dusk to dawn, they sent beams of light from the ground into the night sky. The blue lights gave an eerie, ghost-like appearance of the fallen towers.

I was in the city that night. As I left Manhattan and came out on the Jersey side, I was able to see the Tribute in Lights. To me it looked like it was a pathway for all the souls lost on that day, to find their way to heaven.

I still try to see it every year and I still feel the same way. It takes your breath away.

In trying to decide on a song for today, I was thinking about the Tribute in Lights and about the families and friends of those who lost loved ones. What do they think of when they see those two beams pointed towards the stars...what do they think of when they look at the sky every night since 9/11?

This is the song I chose. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals "Stars" 

Please read the lyrics as you listen to the song and remember...

"I lit a fire with the love you left behind, 

And it burned wild and crept up the mountainside. 

I followed your ashes into outer space 

I can't look out the window, 

I can't look at this place, 

I can't look at the stars, 

They make me wonder where you are 

Stars, 

Up on heaven's boulevard 

And if I know you at all, 

I know you've gone too far 

So I, I can't look at the stars 

All those times we looked up at the sky, 

Looking out so far, 

We felt like we could fly. 

And now I'm all alone in the dark of night, 

The moon is shining, 

But I can't see the light, 

And I can't look at the 

Stars, 

They make me wonder where you are 

Stars, 

Up on heaven's boulevard 

And if I know you at all, 

I know you've gone too far 

So I, I can't look at the stars 

Stars, 

Stars, 

They make me wonder where you are 

Stars, 

Up on heaven's boulevard 

And if I know you at all, 

I know you've gone too far 

So I can't look at the stars."

Never forget.

..