I awoke with 30 minutes left until touchdown.

As we flew over the Bay Area, every personal TV on the plane—each sporting 95 channels, as Continental was quick to tell us—was turned to CNN. It was minutes after the news broke, and the text on screen was clear: Osama bin Laden had been killed.

It was hard to contemplate. So I didn’t. Perspective took a back seat to a confluence of various sensations—joy, excitement, pride and hate. Resounding hate. We got back to our house and blared everything from “America, Fuck Yeah” to “Anchors Aweigh.” It was a SEAL team that got him, after all. Twice. In the head. Get some.

But in a moment between gearing up for a celebratory Lake Lag bonfire, running elatedly down the halls and texting friends across the country, the magnitude of the event set in. I sat and was instantly overwhelmed. I couldn’t put the feeling into words, but it was reminiscent of sadness—a rush of uncertainty, gloom and perhaps worst of all, hopelessness. And then I realized what had hit me: the same cocktail of emotions I felt nearly a decade prior on that fateful September morning.

I had reflected on my 9/11 experience before Sunday, but I had never felt like I had in that instance—like I was back in the body of my 12-year-old self, sitting in a seventh grade math class listening to an assistant principal read a curt report about an accident at the World Trade Center.

Her statement was not one about a far-off locale. I grew up in New York City. This was home. Students with parents who worked near the towers were allowed to use the phone to see if they were all right. My dad worked in the area at the time, so I went to place a call. We connected. Next to me was a girl, trying to do the same with her father. I don’t know if she ever spoke to him then, but I do know that he never came home.

At that point, though, we didn’t know any details about anything—only that parents were chaotically picking their children up from school. The blanks were slowly filled in, and by the time my mother arrived to retrieve my sister and me, the towers had fallen—an accident, this was not.

We walked across Central Park. We were miles away from Ground Zero, but the plumes of smoke were unmistakable. The spectacle was breathtaking, and I could only imagine the scene at the towers themselves. If I was two years older, I would have been there—a freshman at my eventual high school, located not a stone’s throw away from the WTC. But I wasn’t. Dad was, though, and since that short phone call a couple of hours before, we hadn’t talked.

Cell service was down throughout the city. Landlines barely worked, either—in fact, it was a small miracle we had connected at all. My mom and I—my sister couldn’t stand the coverage—watched the news with amazement. And with every passing hour, we grew more and more concerned. Dad worked about 130 blocks from home—a distance of nearly 6.5 miles—but even then, my 12-year-old brain reasoned, it shouldn’t take till the late afternoon for him to make it back.

He eventually walked through the door, covered head-to-toe in ash. God only knows what that dust once was. He had minor burns on his hands but was otherwise fine, just exhausted. The image is forever seared into my memory.

Our experience didn’t end there. My school was subjected to bomb threats multiple times a week for close to a year. But all things considered, we were lucky. No family members died, and while we knew people who perished, so did millions of other Americans. I do not purport to feel the sorrow of those who lost loved ones. I’m sure it retains its stranglehold to this day. Osama’s death may provide closure to some, but I can understand if others are left wanting—his newfound place in hell doesn’t bring back those who perished. But at the least, a measure of justice has been served, and there seems to be at least some air of closure to our national healing.

It’s a process that began while the ruins were still hot, and it manifested itself in our stadiums and ballparks. The NFL postponed the games of September 16 and 17, but on September 23, the New York Giants took to the field against the Kansas City Chiefs, emerging from the tunnel with NYPD and NYFD hats and American flags. The Arrowhead faithfully treated them like the home team. President Bush threw out the ceremonial first pitch—a strike—at Yankee Stadium during the World Series. The crowd roared. These sporting cathedrals provided a cathartic environment, a unifying venue where tens of thousands could rise as one.

It’s fitting then, that perhaps the first major celebration of Osama’s demise came at a baseball game, one that featured the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizen Bank Park. In other words: a matchup of two teams that despise each other with a fiery passion, in a city known for its hostility in the sporting realm. But the news about Osama spread like wildfire. The “U-S-A” chants started and grew stronger with each iteration.

And just like in the fall of 2001, we were united again.

Want to recount your memories? Email Wyndam Makowsky at makowsky “at” stanford.edu.