I personally don’t remember 9/ll. I was in first grade at Rolling Hills Elementary, which is in River Road ISD in northern Amarillo. The staff may have heard the news earlier that day, but they didn’t tell us anything. They didn’t shut down school or send us home. It looked just like any other day. I don’t even remember when it was that I first heard about the attacks.

But I remember it broke my heart that there was someone out there so devoid of love, they would scheme to murder almost 3,000 of our own citizens to make a point. I don’t mind that we honor that memory, but the timing is so recent that this much documentation of it never allows us to find peace with what happened.

During Spring Break in March 2012, I visited New York City on the choir’s biannual trip. One of our stops was the 9/11 Memorial, built on the World Trade Center site. Before our visit to the Memorial, our tour guide explained that was the proper name, not “Ground Zero,” as that term refers to the attack, not the place.

The reflection pools, built where the Twin Towers once stood, symbolize so much in their design. They represent the tears shed for those lost on that day and those who gave their lives because of what happened that day, but also a reflection on the past and the hope for the future. The names around the pools were placed with thought as I saw names of those who worked together in offices of the towers, men in the same firefighting and police units, acquaintances, friends and teammates engraved next to each other.

I thought there was so much fitting about the pools and how they reflect our own feelings about that day, both then and now. As we approach the eleventh anniversary of the attacks, we remember the emotions on that day. Some of us feel them all over again. But that doesn’t mean we should forget the hope for those of us who are still alive or the possibilities still out there. There is still another day for us. We remember, but we don’t dwell on it so much that we forget we’re alive in the present and still have a future.