25 Years

What I remember most about that morning was the searingly blue sky.

It was a quintessential autumn day in Boston on September 11, 2001. The sun was bright. The leaves were beginning to turn. The air was as crisp as a freshly-picked apple. 

By the end of the day, my office had been on lockdown for hours. Rumors of the unimaginable began to percolate. Followed by the images. All of those haunting images.

The Twin Towers. The Pentagon. The fields of Shanksville. An imprint of bloodshed that has never left me.

Included among the thousands who lost their lives that day was a college classmate, Patrick McGuire. He was working on the 84th floor of the South Tower when the second plane hit.

Twenty-five years in a blink. But a lifetime as well...