A Nephew's Remembrance

I'm moving the following up from the comments section of Thomas's remembrance. It's the memories of his nephew, Brian, on that dark day. I thought they deserved to be up top. Thank you, Brian.

I thought I would share my memories of the day:

I was in 12th grade. I was looking forward to school that day to discuss the Broncos latest triumph with my classmates. I awoke to my mother pounding on my bedroom door. Figuring I had overslept again, I simply made an annoyed grunt to indicate I was awake. She told me to turn on the TV. I watched in shock before going to school. On my way in from the parking lot a classmate told me that another plane hit the pentagon, I distinctly remembering saying the following, "shut the fuck up, that isn't funny." I limped through my first period music appreciation class, where my teacher who had been holed up in his classroom since 5 that morning had no clue what was going on and conducted class as usual. During the break the secretary pulled me aside as I walked past the office and told me my parents had called and asked for me to return home. Knowing that my uncle was a commodities trader I knew this was a possibility but tried not to think about it. I remember walking to my car, saying to myself, "someone is dead. no everything is fine." I got home to find my mother in tears saying everything was fine, it was a false alarm. Reliable information was so hard to come by that day. I hugged my parents and told them I loved them and returned to school. I made it through my free period and micro-economics like the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders. During lunch, I passed on eating opting instead to watch the news coverage with about 50 other people in the green room of the theater. I'll never forget watching one girl burst into tears as they replayed the second plane hitting. We went to our afternoon classes, Calculus and English, where none of us knew what to do or what to say. Soccer practice that afternoon was cancelled, so I went home. When I got there my mom was in tears, she met me halfway up the driveway "We lost Thomas." 92nd floor Tower 1. It hit me like a ton of bricks, my uncle Thomas was a hero of mine, the smartest and funniest man I've ever known. I was confused, "What? How? I thought everything was fine?" As I said reliable information was so hard to come by. He usually worked across the street at NYMEX, but was at a meeting in his brokerage house's office. The funny thing was that he never even should've been there. He had a bought a seat on the exchange and was going to start his own firm. He was covering for one of his many friends that was on vacation. The meeting he was in had no bearing on him, it had to do with the benefits of the traders in his firm. But that was the kind of man that he was. He'd give you the shirt off his back and never ask for a thing in return and he was always there to back up his friends. So when something came up that would affect his friends he was there to show that he was behind them fully.