Sometimes it is hard to believe that ten years have passed since September 11, 2001. At other times, it feels like a lifetime has passed because so much has changed in the ten years since we lost friends and loved ones in the random acts of violence perpetrated against us because we are Americans.
Our whole world changed that day because it demonstrated to us in the most horrible way imaginable that we aren’t immune to the sort of crazy foreign terrorist attacks that, until then, mostly seemed to happen in other parts of the world. Sure, we had our own home grown crazy terrorist in Tim McVeigh, but this was different.
I sometimes feel that in the politicization of September 11th, we’ve lost sight of the real people who were lost that day. That fact makes me very angry because I lost a friend — a real person, not some political thing — that day.
Her name was Catherine Gorayeb. She was a single mom of a toddler (Kate, then 2 1/2, now almost a teenager), and was a Marketing person for a firm called Random Walk Computing. Her office was in midtown, but she was in the World Trade Center that day for a meeting. I learned of her death a couple days after September 11th. She was there by accident of timing, but then again, was anyone really supposed to be there to endure the insanity that was terrorism on that day? The point of terrorism is its horrid randomness. They attack without any reason. We lose friends and loved ones as a result of their idiotic acts.
I wrote a really long piece about Catherine last year, so I won’t repeat it. I posted a tribute on legacy this year, as did several other friends, but I cannot let this day pass without posting a short remembrance of her here, too.
