I know you're sick of hearing about it

But they got him.

It took 10 years, but they got him.

Kinda crazy. To be honest I hadn't even thought about Osama Bin Laden for a long while. I sort of pictured him dying of kidney failure in a cave somewhere. That he died in a mansion sort of makes me shake my head.

It makes me remember where I was on that day. I remember vividly the images playing over and over of the planes flying into the towers, the billowing flames and black smoke, and the people wandering stunned in the streets.

My sister and I were driving to the University. It was the 2nd day of classes in the Fall 2001 semester. We had the radio turned on as we sat waiting for a light to change when one of the announcers began to cry. Their shock and horror were clear, even through the shabby little radio in my 1991 Chevy Cavalier. My sister and I stared at each other, stunned and confused.

WHAT just happened!? Planes? Huh?

I dropped her at her building and parked the car. As I walked to class I still wasn't clear on what had actually happened - just that there had been some kind of plane crash in the States, that it had been horrific, and that they suspected some kind of attack.

When I walked into the building that housed my lecture hall that morning there were TVs on wheeled stands throughout the hallways. All of them were turned to CNN, and all of them were surrounded by students sitting silently in front of them.

I joined one group and we watched the planes crashing over... and over... and over. It was surreal. It looked like something out of a movie.

I'd never seen a building filled with 20something students so quiet. It was eerie. My boyfriend at the time called my cell, asking if I was okay (of course I was, why wouldn't I be?!) My professor in my next class lectured as though nothing had happened, and I can remember feeling totally shocked that he didn't even mention the attack.

The next professor warned us all that our world was about to change, that personal freedoms were going to be redefined, and to remember this moment. At the time I thought the fuzzy haired man with the Albert Einstein mustache was exaggerating, but he was spot on.

It hasn't been the same. I grieved for the thousands of people who lost their loved ones either in planes, or on the ground, or months afterward when they suffered from debilitating diseases caused by rescue efforts. I grieved for the soldiers who had rushed to Afghanistan and their families and friends left behind. I grieved for the prisoners in Guantanamo. I grieved for the innocent civilians blown up and injured in conflicts in Aghanistan.

There was so much heartache that came from those attacks. 9/11 filled the world with so much pain and sorrow for so many people, and for that reason I'm glad Osama is dead. I know it's not right to celebrate death or killing. I know that a new leader is going to take over Al Qaeda, and that heartache and sorrow have a good foothold and aren't going anywhere soon.

But I hope that this can end the chapter, sort of - 10 years later, many things in the world have changed because of Osama's actions. I wonder what things in the world will change now that he is dead.

I wonder what I will tell my children when they are old enough to ask me about 9/11 and Bin Laden. I remember asking my mom who Hitler was and feeling dissatisfied with her answer. I hope that since I was a young adult when 9/11 happened I'll be able to answer their questions to the best of my ability, but more than that, I hope to answer them in a way to impress upon them the most important fact of the whole thing - that there was so much pain and sadness caused by the conflict, and that's the worst part of all.

The winds of change are blowing, that's for sure.