Explaining 9/11

My family has taken a couple of trips to New England.  We normally try to avoid driving through New York City.  Neither my husband nor I feel very comfortable driving in the city.  I'm a midwestern girl.  Give me a 2 lane highway with the windows down and I'm happy.  Stop and go traffic in the Bronx, well, that's a little stressful, especially for any trip that's more than 5 hours long.

A while back, just my son and I went to visit a friend and a cousin in New England.  I drove an hour out of the way to miss driving through the city.  My son was devastated.  I didn't realize he had such a fascination with New York City.  Whenever he sees it on the news, or hears about it in a book, he points it out.  He definitely wants to visit some day.

All this talk about New York City seemed pretty innocent.  We talked about the museums and Central Park and all the things to see and do.  He wanted to see pictures.  So I showed him pictures of the skyline and he asked us about the tall buildings that my husband and I had been in.  We should have seen it coming; but we didn't.

I'm not exactly sure how the World Trade Center towers came up.  I'm not sure if it was him looking at pictures and seeing an empty spot in the skyline, or if we were talking with each other and innocently mentioned them as places we had visited.

How do you explain 9/11 to a 5 year old.  I feel kind of blessed that I'm having this conversation 18 years after it happened.  It makes me really understanding of the difficulties parents had when it was fresh.

Both my husband and I knew several people in different locations that were affected by the terror that day.  We had even once taken our son to the Memorial in Shanksville.  He was younger then.  We just kind of explained the Memo

Courtesy of Pixabay

rial there as a place where good people died fighting evil and were heroic in saving other people from peril.  At that time, he didn't ask more questions.

But to explain how there were two giant buildings and they aren't there anymore, that's tough.  It's just so real, so obvious.  It's not a philosophical discussion.


We explained to our son how some people made evil decisions.  They somehow thought that God had told them to hurt other people.  We reminded our son that God will NEVER tell you to hurt other people.  We told him that many people went home to Jesus on that day.  My husband and I nervously glanced back and forth, hoping we didn't need to fill in anymore blanks.  We briefly discussed how religion and belief in God is a good thing and that we always need to be aware of good and evil.

Our son processed this information.  He then told us, "some girls in my class said that those who don't believe in God go to Hell.  I think that maybe they go to Purgatory."  This kind of took us aback.  I didn't even know that my son knew what Purgatory was.  I was proud that my son did seem to have an awareness of a merciful and loving God.

Getting closer to the anniversary of 9/11, I've had the opportunity to learn more about the hero dogs that helped search and rescue people and continue to prevent bad things from happening now.  I don't know that we fully answered his questions, I don't know that all of my theological questions have been answered.  Hopefully, as distance and healing occur, we can all explain what happened so no one ever forgets, but also have the grace to remember, there is evil.