Tonight we made time to go to the Tempe Healing Garden – a September 11 memorial. We try and go every year and I always hold out hope that perhaps a storm will move through and we can enjoy it without melting to death. We’ve never been so lucky, so we try and go right at sundown to make it as bearable as possible.

Every flag represents someone who lost their life that day and each flag has a laminated card giving a brief biography of the person. Their name, age, where they were from, where they worked and a snippet about them or why they were in the Trade Center or on a plane that day.

After reading through so many cards, Hunter shared one that stuck with him: A man who started work in disaster recovery management at the Trade Centers on September 10th. Tragic. We found cards where family members lost their lives together. Children. Public servants. Rows and rows of innocent people.

And every year we attend to remember. Steve and I remembering the actual event as to how we lived it and our kids remembering what we’ve taught them. Always a tender experience.