The Solemn Importance of Visiting the 9/11 Memorial & Museum

9/11 Memorial & Museum, New York City

If you were living in 2001 and over the age of 5 you not only remember 9/11 but you can probably recount where you were and what you were doing the moment the planes hit the buildings in New York City, the Pentagon and that field in Pennsylvania. It was still early here in Utah and I was sleeping. My husband and I were living with my parents at the time and we were woken up by my father calling to us urgently over the home intercom, “Kris, wake up! We’re being attacked!” I’ll never forget it. It was horrifying. It was surreal. And in that moment I knew that things wouldn’t ever be the same.

Explaining to Michaela the feelings these memories bring is like me trying to comprehend the attack on Pearl Harbor. I had family there in the harbor that day in 1941. I’ve seen it depicted in films. I visited the memorial as a small child. It just doesn’t really stick in your brain unless you have seen it unfolding right before your eyes. Movies can only do so much because you know it’s actors and special effects. To fully understand, you need it to be real.

The 9/11 Memorial and Museum is sacred ground. It is an important place that brings to life the nightmare from that day to those who weren’t yet living or too young to remember. You stand in the footprint of those once majestic buildings. You can touch the bent steel. You can hear the recordings of the terrified victims who knew they were going to die. This memorial is different than an impersonal statue you may see at an another. The relics are real. The voices aren’t from actors. It is a haunting reminder of one of the most terrible days our country has ever had and a beautiful tribute to the thousands of souls we lost that day.

The museum is organized as a timeline. Each exhibit represents a moment in time from the peaceful commute to work to the violent impact of the planes to the crumbling of the steel and concrete and the desperate flights of the doomed who chose end it with the wind vs the searing heat of the engine fuel and flames. Kleenex stations are situated through out the exhibit. Photography is only allowed in the outer exhibits as behind walls that encase the real voices and pictures of the dead protect what for many family members and friends as the final resting place of their loved ones. This place is a cemetery.

Recorded news reports, videos from bystanders, voicemail recordings, pictures, broken computers, bloodied shoes, fire trucks crumpled up like they were Matchbox toys, fire singed papers, a baby’s onsie are just some of what you will see there. Particularly haunting for me was the exhibit for United Flight 93 that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The black box recordings from the plane intermingled voicemails from the passengers calling to say their goodbyes echo in a small room that shows images from that day. Their voices are the only reminder of what happened, the story unfolding from the beginning to end in real time. These people knew what was coming because they had been warned of the tragedy that had already taken place in New York and Washington DC. The bravery of those people who accepted their fate and charged the flight deck of their ill-fated aircraft is beyond comprehension. They knew they were going to die but maybe, just maybe they could save the people on the ground who would have otherwise perished when these Islamic Extremists used airplanes as bombs. This exhibit brought me to tears.

So well done is this memorial and museum that not visiting it when you’re in New York is a true shame. If you visit the city, make time – plenty of it – and go. Watch the films, feel the bent steel, walk in the place where thousands perished, run your fingers across their names that are etched along side the memorial pools… Pay your respects and allow it to teach your children about that day.