Where were you?

I wasn't planning on posting today.

Normally, I'll reflect on a posting idea for a day or so before I make a decision to post or not - I just try to piece it together in my head before sharing it with the world. However, something I saw just a few minutes ago compelled me to enter a post about today's sad, sad anniversary.

Today is a clear, sunny Tuesday... just as it was six years ago. Today I'm off from work... just as I was six years ago. And as I was flipping the channels, MS NBC was broadcasting the event, in real time... just as it happened six years ago. Right then and there I was transported back to that awful, awful time.

Over the generations, people have asked one another "where were you?" It's a simple question that recognizes the incredible impact one event can have on so many lives. It happened when the Challenger exploded, it happened when Kennedy was assassinated, it happened when Pearl Harbor was attacked, just to name a few; and now, of course, it is a question asked in reference to this tragic day six years ago.

EM and I had just left a home improvement store with some painting supplies for a kitchen remodel. We stopped at a local paint store to obtain one item that the other store didn't have. When we tried to get service, we realized that the store staff was mesmerized by the images on the TV so we innocently asked what was going on never even imagining what we would hear and see next. So there we stood, like the others, frozen to the story and the images unfolding in front of us.

As we drove home we intently listened to the radio for more information; and, when we arrived home we tuned into the news for more of the same. It was a long, long painful day and all I could do was stare, and sob, while trying to absorb the magnitude of it all. I hope to never again feel the feelings I felt that day, but I know it's just a matter of time before I do.

I don't recall exactly when, but we learned in the moments following those despicable acts that a member of EM's family perished in the Pentagon. I never met Patrick Dunn. I don't know much about him other than what has been written which includes the heart-wrenching fact that his wife was three months pregnant when he died.

When EM was three months pregnant, Ellie was becoming very real for us. We knew she was a she. We knew she'd be named Ellie Rose. We knew, at least for that stage of the pregnancy, that she was doing well. So it was at that point that EM and I could really start to dream, together, about our baby girl. And we could share in the excitement of wondering what was to come. Patrick and Stephanie were robbed of that; Allie, of course, was robbed, too.

It's all so, so sad and senseless. But now when Ellie asks that inevitable question at least there will be some semblance of an answer, and that is a good thing.

-ED