It has been 15 years. 180 months. About 780 weeks. About 5,475 days. Since then, tragedies have struck, natural disasters have hit and attacks have hurt us but nothing has left the country in the state that September 11, 2001 did.
Now, freshmen in high school will be learning about 9/11 from a textbook, as an event that happened before they were born. The little boys and girls whom were picked up from kindergarden early that day are now halfway through college. The remainders of the fallen towers are now a memorial, in New York, engraved with the names of those lost on that day. On the surface the world looks like it has picked up the pieces from that day and moved on. But to those who lost more than their peace of mind, the day lives on with them forever.
"It doesn't get easier. The grief never goes away. You don't move forward — it always stays with you," Tom Acquaviva tells http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/marking-15-years-911-ceremony-personal-focus-42006177ABC News in reference to his son, Paul Acquaviva, whom he lost that day.
While many continue to grieve the unthinkable loss that time has yet to heal, others reflect on the randomness of life. The spilled coffee that made them turn around to change their shirt before going to work. Or the chance encounters that delayed them and made them miss their trains. Some still wonder what could have happened.
"We weren't bound for New York or anything. We were bound for Chicago. We started circling around Tampa because everything had happened. We finally made it to Chicago and they sequestered our plane. We were sitting there for five or six hours. Every other plane around us had left. Eventually a bunch of ambulances and cops started coming out towards our plane. A couple FBI guys took a guy off the plane, handcuffed him and that was the last we saw of him. If the guy was one of the guys, he chickened out or he wasn't one of them and it was no big deal. After the fact, you hear that there was one unaccounted guy who was unaccounted for. You hear the theories but I don't know, I never really dug into it," Don Ensign said of his flight on 9/11.
Today, outside of the Pentagon, President Obama http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-mark-15th-anniversary-911-attacks-pentagon/story?id=42001498spoke of the "3,000 beautiful lives" that were lost that day. He commended the families who have found the strength to continue on. He spoke of the similar same strength seen after the Boston attack: The strength that the country showed as a whole. Because there is no way to control tragedies like these ones. The only control we have is in the strength that we choose to use in the wake of disaster.
