Remembering Alan Bondarenko

Last year, a friend of mine created a special online tribute to those who lost their lives on September 11th, 2001. Those who participated "adopted" a victim to honor on their blogs as a way to remember the lives of those innocent folks that were just showing up to work on that fateful day. It is strange to me in that, just 1 year prior to the tragedy, I myself was in World Trade Two receiving training for my then profession, as a financial advisor. I remember looking out of the windows from the 67th floor and thinking about what an incredible view it was- for those of us who had never lived in New York, we all took pictures and gawked like the tourists we were...... I always wondered how many of the folks who lost their lives on September 11th just one year later were people I had perhaps shared an elevator ride with or stood next to in line waiting for lunch in the cafeteria. I remember the faces of the people I did know, the people I did not send a Christmas card to, the people I never got to say goodbye to and my heart aches for their families and friends.

6 Years have passed. I will never forget that day. I will never forget watching the first building burning and seeing that second plane crash. I will never forget the chills that went down my spine and the tears that streamed down my face when I realized people I knew personally were no longer living. I will never forget when the buildings collapsed and the crushing blow I felt when I knew that  those brave firefighters who ran up the stairs in thick black smoke and  the still trappped victims laid there in a heap of twisted metal and debris. I will never forget.

I will never forget that Mr. Bondarenko was an amazing man with a life and a family and friends who adored him. Even though I had never met him, from the messages his family had sent me and the comments others had made about him, he seemed like a fun loving person, someone I would have loved to sit and have a cup of coffee with.

The writer Herman Melville once wrote that were are not alone in our existence here, our lives are all intertwined and connected by thousands of invisible threads. By agreeing to participate in last year's tribute, the victims of 9/11 became more than a name on a list, they became faces with stories to tell and legacies to leave. For my own family, Mr. Marino and Mr. Bondarenko will never be forgotten.

In Memory of Alan Bondarenko

Comments

[dorothy]

We should NEVER forget what happen on Sept 11, 2001.