The Eye

For some, time is a great healer. For others, years can never put a distance between them and events that have occurred. I didn’t have anyone that I knew involved in these terrible events, and in some ways I felt like I shouldn’t be upset, well not nearly as upset as someone that did lose a loved one, a colleague, a friend, or an acquaintance. That’s crazy to think that way of course, but I kind of felt guilty about it in some ways.

I was in England at that time. I was working in an office in London, when whispers went around the office that there had been a terrible plane crash in New York into the World Trade Center.

It was almost 2pm in the afternoon there.

We didn’t have any TVs in the office but someone in another department was getting the news online from a stream of some kind.

It was when we heard that a second plane had crashed that the thought went instantly from it being a terrible accident to one of a deliberate act.

I called my wife, who was working for Credit Suisse First Boston, in London’s docklands at the time, and who was very near to the 800 feet tall Canary Wharf Tower. It’s one of the tallest office buildings in Europe, and I was mentally drawing a parallel to the World Trade Center.

The IRA had already bombed the area in 1996. She assured me that everyone was ok, although there were police everywhere.

We met up, as we usually did, after work, and on the train ride home, no-one was really talking about anything else.

When we arrived home, around 6.30pm, we put the TV on, and watched the news channels over and over until the early hours of the morning.

I remember the atmosphere in England being generally one of shock, horror and total disbelief.

I know first hand what it is like to try and find out about friends and family involved in a tragedy; my ex in-laws perished in a ferry disaster in Belgium in 1987, and we called the emergency help line number for FOUR days before we even got through.

It made me think of things I didn’t want to think - trying to imagine what those people in the Twin Towers went through; and thinking of what I would like to do to the perpetrators - if they had survived - I guess we all have an evil streak inside somewhere - my thoughts were definitely not humane at that time.

The world of course goes on but for some it stopped forever on that sunny morning in New York City, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and for many it will never quite be the same world again.