09/11/2026
No additional words are needed here.......
A quarter of a century.
Twenty-five years since the morning the world changed.
Since ordinary lives became names we would learn to remember.
Twenty-five years.
Long enough for children to grow,
for voices to deepen,
for photographs to fade at the edges,
for whole chapters of life to be written.
And yet… some absences never grow old.
There are birthdays that still carry an ache.
Empty chairs that still seem to sink under the weight of someone who once sat there.
Photographs showing someone who never got old.
A quarter of a century is a long time to live with memory;
but memory is a strange thing.
It does not always fade.
Sometimes it becomes the sound of a voice you can still hear.
A smile you can still picture.
A name you will never stop saying.
Today we remember those who left home that morning,
never knowing it would be their last journey.
We remember those who answered the call;
who ran towards danger to save another life.
We remember those who waited for someone
who would never return.
And we remember the lives beyond that day:
the loves, the friendships, the families, the hopes, the ordinary moments
that made each life precious.
Because they were never just a memory.
They were someone's child.
Someone's parent.
Someone's partner.
Someone's friend.
A future that mattered.
Twenty-five years later, we speak their names
not because we cannot move forward,
but because we choose to carry them forward with us.
Because forgetting would mean allowing time to take something
that was never time's to take.
Today we pause.
A quarter of a century has passed beneath our feet.
Generations have grown who know that morning only through photographs
and stories.
So we tell them.
We tell them who was lost, who they were.
That they mattered.
And we remember.
And when it gets dark again, as life tends to do from time to time,
we honour them always.
By carrying their light with us
into a new day.
*****
On the 25th anniversary of 9/11
Artwork by Robert Finale
Words by Becky Hemsley
