As John and I watched TV 20 years ago, seeing the already burning WTC North Tower, I looked at John in horror and said, “We’re at war. We’ve just been attacked.”

He was sure it was an accident, having seen small planes crash into the Empire State Building.

“Maybe,” I said, hoping he was right. “No sane pilot would fly into a building when they could ditch in the river.”

Then we saw a plane fly into the South Tower of the WTC.

2,977 people were immediately killed in the attacks.

Of those who died during the initial attacks and the subsequent collapses of the Towers, 343 were New York City firefighters, 23 were New York City police officers, 37 were officers at the Port Authority and 8 were responding EMS personnel, including FDNY paramedics CARLOS LILLO and RICARDO QUINN.

I went to work at first, before being sent home. Then I spent weeks talking to people so I could help tell the stories of the EMS providers who died and the emergency response to the attack.

Cecilia Lillo and Virginia Quinn, you are in my thoughts today.

For a brief moment on 9/11, the world stood with the U.S. in horror. Instead of taking that moment to forge lasting alliances, we went to war. The horror of planes deliberately crashing into the WTC, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa., in the morning was followed by the further horror of bombs and guns in Afghanistan that very night.

I wish the children of those killed in the attacks had been able to grow up with their parents to love and support them.

I wish we had not left a generation of Afghan and Iraqi children orphans in the wake of this tragedy.

The lesson of this tragedy? An eye for an eye leads to a sightless world. 20 years later, the living memory is fading into history.