Thoughts on this day

Today is September 11th, 2009. Eight years ago we, as a nation, experienced a tragedy of indescribable proportions.

Today has been a day of reflection and remembrance, as it should be. All the news channel have talked about it. Facebook statuses give thanks and updates of "I remember where I was when..." Online articles, magazines and blogs like my own have tried to find the words to accurately describe the horror of September 11, 2001, the pain of attempting to move past it and the difficulties that these anniversaries bring for so many.

Eight years later I sit here and can only draw the same conclusion I drew then:

There just are no words to describe it.

Not any of it.

Not the acts of terrorism, not the unification of our country in the aftermath, not the horror, not the anger, not the grief, not the heroism...none of it will ever, EVER accurately be described by words. They only way to know truly what it was was to have lived through it and even then there are different versions and experiences that will never properly be relayed because the words that will be used will never be enough.

No history books will ever do it justice, though they will try. Teachers will try. Professors will try. Historians and museum curators and even Hollywood will try.

But the words will be lacking and the grief will linger and the generations that come afterwards will not ever fully understand it, even when they try. Because nothing, NOTHING can accurately describe that day and the days afterwards.

And so, like so many others, I'm left with only being able to say "thank you" to those who were heroic that day, "I'm sorry" to those who lost loved ones and "God Bless America" to the rest of us.

May we never need to search for such horrific words again.