November 12, 2001 flight 587 crashed on a house in Belle Harbor in Queens. The plane was torn apart in the sky, with the tail landing in Jamaica Bay Station. An engine from flight 587 fell onto a gas station. No one knew if it was another act of terrorism that had bought the plane down, since it was two months after the big incident with the Twin Towers crashing down.

My mother was already watching the news, hoping her sister and nephew weren’t gone. I was only six years old and didn’t know what was going on. I haven’t got the concept about death yet. All I was doing was listening and trying to understand what was going on. My mother got a phone call from my aunt. She told her that their sister Mariana Flores and nephew Isaiah Flores died in that airplane crash. My mother was extremely hurt to respond to my aunt. “Why” is all she cried hitting the floor.

The tears and hurt is all I sensed in my mother at that moment. While all of this was happening I was next to my mother playing with my kitchen set, I couldn’t stand seeing my mother cry. I dropped my plastic pan, plastic eggs, and asked my mother, “Are you ok mommy?”

Her only response was “Yes don’t worry keep playing with your kitchen set.”

But I knew she wasn’t ok. I didn’t know what to do. My mother kept watching the news as they were naming everyone who was on the plane. They were talking about it would be two days where we could go and see the plane and the house all burnt. November 14 arrived my mother, my father, my sister, and I drove all the way to Queens to see this tragedy, As we were getting near the house, all I seen was the house extremely burnt down, trees and woods of the house all piled up on top of the house with half the airplane on the house and the wing of the airplane on the street. I kept thinking were there people or kids inside the house when this airplane crashed. After we were done seeing this horrible incident, there was this big poster in front of the burnt house, with the passport pictures of the victims. My mother was searching for my aunt and cousin once she found the picture she broke down crying, that’s when it really hit her that my aunt and her nephew died in this airplane crash.

Now that I’m 17 years old I understand what happened and it hurts a lot. I remember that smile my cousin and aunt had in that picture till this day. I miss the old times, I miss having them here in the real world and going to their house every other day because I just love how they were with me. But I have them in my heart and spiritually. I reminisce everyday and wish they were here. Everyday I wake up and look at a picture that my mother has up on the wall of my aunt and cousin and I ask myself is this real, are they really gone?