Where Were You?

 
My parents tell me that they can remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of JFK’s assassination. I suppose I feel the same way about 9/11.
 
I was a junior at Notre Dame, studying abroad in India, when the planes hit the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and rural field. My study group was visiting the village of Mussoorie in the Himalayan foothills that day; we had spent a long day sightseeing, and I was taking a moment alone on the steps of our hotel’s garden, writing a postcard to my parents, when my friend, Beth, breathlessly arrived and sputtered something about CNN and planes in New York City. We had no idea, at the time, what it meant.
 
I remember how we gathered in our hotel room and watched CNN Live, as the second plane plowed into the its tower. We were horrified. We felt very far from home. We cried and hugged each other and prayed a Rosary for all the victims; we later learned that we were united in prayer with our ND community back in the States, as we saw photos of what appeared to be the entire student body assembled on South Quad for an outdoor Mass.
 
The days that followed were tense ones for us. The phone lines were jammed worldwide, so we couldn’t call our parents immediately to assure them of our safety. Parents were calling the University and demanding our immediate return home. We had to say that we were Canadian as we travelled and couldn’t receive visitors to our hotel rooms–no more ordering India-style Pizza Hut! The American Embassy in New Delhi kept close tabs on us. I remember feeling so young and foreign and uncertain of my surroundings.
 
And, then, a few months later, we returned to a somewhat changed country. For the first time, I saw guards holding semi-automatic weapons in the airport. There were American flags flying in front yards. Signs proclaiming “God Bless America” seemed to be everywhere. I felt that, in some ways, I had been cheated from the process of grieving with my country; thus, it is good today, to hear memorials on the radio. It helps to remember and let myself feel sad and proud all at once, for the heroism displayed on the day of infamy. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. YKC!