Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Some form of closure?

Some of you may know that in the 9/11 attacks, I lost a friend, Ed Felt, on United 93. Ed had been traveling to San Francisco on business. I obviouslty feel bad enough about the attacks, but to also lose a friend drives it home much more. Plus, and this is something I've never really shouted about (for obvious reasons), I was meant to be on that flight! The only reason I canceled was because I'd just got married and had promised my wife I'd not travel out of the country for 6 months after the wedding.

So you can probably understand why it was with some trepidation that I finally watched the United 93 movie. I deliberately took a while to buy it on DVD and I've never watched it on TV. But last night I decided to bite the bullet and sit down to watch it alone. I've read reports and seen documentaries over the years about the whole event, but this movie was good in showing the utter chaos and confusion that was going on at the time. The scenes on the plane itself were the hardest: I fly a lot and could empathise with the passengers just from that perspective, but when I considered that I could have been there ...

I'm not sure if I'll ever watch the film again. I don't think I have to in order to understand what Ed's family and those of the other victims, are still going through today. I'm one of the lucky ones, but this is something that will always stay with me.

2 comments:

Dennis Sisterson said...

Hi Mark - United 93 had me biting my nails-! Can hardly imagine what you must have felt like. didn't realise you had a blog. Happy birthday to your kid!
Dennis

Mark Little said...

Hi Dez. Let me know next time you're up!