Five years ago, I was sitting in a newsroom in Dover awaiting for late stories coming in by the staffers at the afternoon paper there.

My managing editor’s voice cut through the chatter.

"No (expletive)," she said into the telephone, hung up and then walked over to the newsroom TV. "A plane just flew into the World Trade Center."

We all waited for the picture to come on, thinking it would be a prop plane or an accident or of course something less than the horror that began unfolding that day.

My memories are mostly of watching the second plane hit and then the flurry of reports that started coming over the wire. A car bomb had gone off in front of the State Department, one report came in incorrectly. The news of the Pentagon. The flight down in PA, to which one editor responded, "Who the (expletive) cares about Pennsylvania?" We watched bodies leaping from the doomed buildings — a man and a woman holding hands in one case — and wondered how awful it must be inside to choose jumping. The wind would catch their hair or their ties as they jumped. It was strangely beautiful, poetic and tragic, all mixed together. At that point, there was something still hopeful in us, thinking the people trapped on the upper floors would still be rescued.

I remember the copy desk immediately pouncing on Osama bin Laden, pulling up stories on the USS Cole to check the date — Oct. 12 — and ponder over whether there was meaning to that this was all happening a month and a day sooner, but otherwise a year later. I remember testy arguments over AP style and the odd feeling that passed through the newsroom as news of local victims began to come in. And I remember a nervous sort of horrified excitement and tension because we really were sitting in the front seat of history.

I remember wondering what it must have been like aboard the planes, especially the early ones, not really knowing when you left that morning that it would be your last day. I remember admiring the people who had the presence of mind to call home, call the airlines, call their parents to tell them what was happening. I remember wondering what it must have been like to get one of those calls or, worse, to miss one.

Sept. 11 for me was mostly watching the stories come in over the wire, trying to put out special editions, trying to sort the facts from the misinformation that was flooding through. I didn’t work in features then, so there was no separation from the tragedy. I watched our planned budget dwindle to leave only one local accident story — a bad one on the Spaulding Turnpike, if I remember it right, that would normally have been on that paper’s front page.

I felt separated from what was going on, and the true horror didn’t hit until much later that day, when I was on my way home, ready to rise early for another special edition. Before I left Dover, I ran a quick errand, passing a woman on the street who was singing an impromptu, a capella rendition of the national anthem, tears running down her face. It was such an achingly beautiful day, the kind that made me think Baz Luhrmann was right, the real troubles in life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you on an idle Tuesday.

I lived in Newmarket at that time, and when I drove home, someone had taken a huge American flag and draped it out the window of a downtown shop. My neighbor, a pilot, was burning a candle on his porch.

In the days that followed, more fragments of what had happened came over the wire. I read stories of heroism, hope, loss and sorrow. But I also read of true evil, the line crossing from patriotism into jingoism and of terrible cases of opportunism — a woman giving a family false hope by using her dead roommate’s credit card, the shooting of a Sikh and phone scams collecting for false charities. I remember the weird fake Nostradamus excerpt about the two birds and wondering why someone would bother to make that up. I remember families posting pictures of their lost relatives, hoping to hear some positive news. I remember wondering what would be left to identify bodies, whether the families of those lost would have anything at all to bury.

But mostly I remember the quiet. The sound of planes passing overhead were such a part of my life in New Hampshire, since Pease was so close to my Seacoast home. The absence of their sound was such an eerie reminder of what had transpired. When I drove past Pease for several months after, black plastic covered the sign for the National Guard office. It reminded me of the way I used to hide under the covers as a kid, when I thought a monster was in my room, hoping, "Maybe he won’t see me." It worried me to see that black plastic.

I remember the coverage on TV on every channel, and the funereal sort of benefit celebrities hosted on a candlelit stage. I remember what a relief it was when regular progamming began to find its way back. The constant replay of images until that point just seemed to reflect my own disbelief. How could this have happened?

This year, I have watched as movies about Sept. 11 have been released. I was only able to bring myself to watch one — The Great New Wonderful, in which Sept. 11 is more an uneasy presence than a starring role, since the film takes place a year after the tragedy. It still feels too soon, to me, too raw, too real.

I don’t have anyone to mourn. No one I knew was lost that day, although for three tense days, a friend who worked as an airline attendant for United was unreachable, only to be found partying on vacation in Thailand through it all. I heard from friends in D.C. and New York, but no one had been in any of the doomed buildings. I have no one to mourn and yet I mourn all the same.

Like it did for so many others, the world, for me, turned into a before and an after that day. Before, we were worried about shark attacks that summer, about Gary Condit’s affair with Chandra Levy, about the fact that our sitting president had almost choked on a pretzel earlier that year.

After, I saw so much paranoia. I saw blood donations reach a point the centers could barely keep up, people were so moved to do something, anything. I saw sadness and mistrust. I saw little kids collecting for the families on Main Street. I saw the appreciation of true heroes — the firefighters, police and paramedics — instead of the manufactured ones Hollywood sells us. I saw pointing fingers and blame and anger. I saw strangers reaching out to help strangers.

I felt my own mortality in a way I never had before. I felt smaller than I ever had, expendable even. It made me look hard at my life and wonder what would be said about me in my obituary someday. It made me want to be a better person and touch lives the way so many people that day had, by guiding others to empty stairwells, by going into the buildings everyone else was running out of. It made me ashamed of my own selfishness.

Five years later, I still long to be a better person. I still long for answers to that day, when in reality, there will never be answers to satisfy.

Sorry for the ramble. Just doing a mind dump on another achingly beautiful Sept. 11.