TIME has honored the upcoming 10th anniversary of 9/11 in one of the most spectacular yet humble ways. In memory of the tragedy and the innocent lives lost, they compiled 40 testimonies of individuals who, as eloquently put by TIME, “led us, moved us and inspired us, from the morning of the attacks through the tumultuous decade that followed.” You may recognize a few of the individuals– Former President George W. Bush and Former Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Pataki and Rudolph Giuliani, to name a few. However TIME also collected the recollections of the survivors, the widows and widowers, the first response teams, and many others deeply affected by this soulless act of terrorism. Hearing such varying accounts put this chaotic event in very clear perspective. Over the last ten years, when thinking about 9/11, I always imaged the victims and their families as a large and undefined aggregation- a blur of faces, all burdened with the same despair. By hearing the detailed narratives of these individuals I began to understand what thousands of people really went through on the morning of September 11th.

An especially emotional testimony was that of Lyzbeth Glick Best, the widow of Jeremy Glick who was a passenger on Flight 93. She soberly described the phone call she received from her husband while his flight was being hijacked. The new mother of an 11-week-old baby was overwhelmed as she listened to the last words of her late husband, all the while watching news footage of the planes striking the World Trade Center. My quick overview of seven-minute-long story does her no justice, therefore I encourage you all to watch it for yourselves, as well as listen to the other eye-opening stories of many like her.

The sorrow we felt as one people after the attack on 9/11 morphed into a strong sense of national pride among our fellow Americans. Let us hold on to that. Today, both parties selfishly labor to prove the proposed success of their political ideals, childishly pointing their fingers at one another rather than working towards a compromise. Now, more than ever, does Congress needs to set aside their differences and put mutual effort into making The United States united once again.

(Tribute to Light photo by propublica under a Creative commons license and photo of Lyzabeth Glick courtesy of Marco Grob of TIME)