My father almost died during the attacks on the World Trade Center. Had his alarm clock not woken him up two hours late, he would certainly be dead by now (his office was obliterated by shards of plane and fuel tank). I remember that day when the towers fell, I asked if my dad was OK, and when I heard his voice I immediately left to go in the basement and play some more video games.

Now that I’m older, I’ve always felt guilty that I didn’t show more emotion that day. Many of his co-workers died, and there I was sitting in the basement playing Goldeneye on Nintendo 64 like nothing had ever happened. I finally got my chance to make amends this year, because I got the opportunity to go make a pilgrimage to actually see in person the ruins of the World Trade Center. Over the summer I went to a leader’s convention in New York City. On our way back from visiting the UN (which is a very impressive building considering its much ado about nothing), our team leaders decided that we should also go to the ruins to pay our respects. Naturally I was excited, because I would finally be able to get that nagging guilt out of my life. I don’t really know what I was expecting, maybe some smoking ruins still laden with glowing debris and molten glass. Maybe I was expecting a giant hole in the ground, something that would symbolize the gap in the hearts of so many loved ones, their friends and family murdered for the crime of earning their daily keep. I don’t know what I was expecting really, but I certainly wasn’t expecting a tourist attraction where there should have been a grave.

The entire site was completely surrounded by massive steel barriers and floodlights, serving the double purpose of protecting the sight from unwanted feet and eyes. Instead, for the reading pleasure of those who came to give their respects, there were seventeen-foot long cardboard sheets that held timelines (all painted red, white, and blue of course), depicting by the second the events that unfolded during the day. Photocopied pictures of what used to be actual buildings were posted all along the little gaps in between the bars, making sure that not a single person could actually see the ruins just incase the sight made some people upset and uncomfortable - as such images do – thus protecting the city from any potential lawsuits. Hundreds of people gathered around these oversized Polaroid’s and gazed in wonder at the buildings that once filled up the gaping hole that we weren’t allowed to see, all of them talking in hushed choruses of “Wow…that really sucks,” and “See if you can squeeze my phone through the bars I wanna get a picture before we go out for Thai.” At the very end of the tour, the words “we will never forget…” were scrawled in elaborate script next to a picture of the Twin Towers greeting the sunset like two very narrow and very tall mountains, that one day disappeared behind a fog of gates and posters.

I tried to be angry, and I couldn’t. I tried to be indignant, and I couldn’t do that either. Instead, I looked past the steel gates, the posters, the timelines, and the life that was now reduced to so many ashes that are hidden from us. In that moment, I was happier that my father was alive than I had ever been before, and I knew that there was no reason to feel guilty now that I had seen what could have been a part of me laying behind those gates and lights.