Don't let hatred build a home in your heart....

Ten years ago I was 26 years old, making plans for my wedding and greatly enjoying my early years working as an Irish News sub-editor. My children were not even a twinkle in their Daddy’s eye. The future was bright and laid out before me to do what I willed.
On September 11th 2001 I drove down the New Lodge Road to work listening to a song on the radio when the presenter cut in to announce that two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York.
When I arrived at work my colleagues were transfixed by the images being beamed through the newsroom televisions. No one spoke. The phones, which rang constantly, fell silent. I watched, as the world did, in horror and disbelief as the towers burned. I watched as human beings – people’s husbands, children’s fathers, mothers, wives – fell like burning confetti to the ground below. I watched as live feeds brought images of people hanging out of the skyscraper’s windows, sick to my stomach knowing that there was no conceivable way those poor souls would ever find a way out.
I watched as a man, who looked around my husband’s age, waved his white suit shirt desperately out the window. The camera zoomed in. He’d written SOS in black marker on his shirt. The black smoke from the crash consumed him. I walked to my desk and closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch any more. The image of that shirtless man falling through those black clouds to his death is seared into my memory forever.
I could not imagine that man’s wife, his mother, his children watching their televisions, seeing their loved one’s last moments being played over and over again on the news. I couldn’t imagine sitting at home watching my husband’s building turn to rubble.
For all who remember that day, witnessing and experiencing the last moments of life and death through our television sets from the safety of our offices or homes it was surreal, disturbing, heartbreaking. What must it have been like for the families of those that perished that day?
In the days that followed we went to work, we relayed the news as always. Part of our job was to trawl through news from American reporters, condense and organised the stories for inclusion in the paper.
I read hundreds and hundreds of heartbreaking stories; saw hundreds of heart wrenching images. Some of the details from the more graphic reports had to be omitted in case they would upset our readers. But I read them and I remember them.
I read dialogues of last phone calls to wives, viewed pictures of grief-stricken fathers searching the savaged streets of New York for their missing daughters, read of how entire fire departments had been wiped out. Thousands of miles away from the events of that day, sitting in a newsroom in Belfast, I cried for people I had never met. Just months before I married my husband I cried for the wives whose husbands were never coming home, the children who would never see their fathers or mothers again.
Ten years on the horrific images are on the television again. I have four children now. Two of them are old enough to be aware of world affairs, but too young to fully understand the viciousness of world we live in, the hate that drives people to kill their fellow human beings.
They have asked me, “Why did those bad men do that?”
It’s complicated I say. I have told them there were men who hated America. This hatred was so intense they turned themselves into human weapons and destroyed what they thought were the two great symbols of America.
I tell them that America went to war after that attack and that there are families in Afghanistan and Iraq who are suffering the same horror of having their loved ones ripped from them, just as those on 9/11 did. Entire families have been wiped out. Innocent men, women and children, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters slaughtered as those were on September 11th. That soldiers were sent off to war in unpronounceable places and have never come home again.
I wonder what kind of world I have brought my children into, I worry for them as they grow. As a mother I hope to teach my children that there are no winners in war. Hatred is like poison I tell them. People should never let it build a home in their hearts.
In the days, weeks, months and years after 9/11 there were a lot of words written on the tragic happenings. I don’t recall a lot of them.
What stands out in my mind are the words of my colleague, Irish News columnist Anne Hailes. In the days after the horrific events of that day she told us in her column to gather those we love dear and hold them close, cherish them, appreciate them, tell them we love them. They were wise words then, and wise words now.