This is what I wrote a couple of years ago. Still seems pretty touching to me. Here is 2007.
James was 7 on September 11. He knows about it, but doesn’t remember it. Pat’s cousin was in the Trade Towers during the first attack, at the beginning of the Clinton administration. Her companion went into the buildings after the attacks on 9/11 to rescue people and, in the process, lost his life. James confessed that he felt awkward about these stories because it just doesn’t feel like a big deal to him–he wished that it felt like more of a big deal, but it just doesn’t. Likewise, Pat obviously wanted James to at least know his family connection to what happened. Not unlike mourning the death of a loved one, maybe the most difficult part to deal with national tragedy is that everyone does so in a different way.