PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – At 4:53 p.m., Haiti fell silent.

It was a rare quiet moment in this boisterous city normally filled with the sounds of nearly a million people who live on the street.

Some people marked this painful day in bed, the hurt too much to bear. Others visited cemeteries and mass graves where only now tiny wooden crosses mark the barren land where the vast majority of the people who died here a year ago now lay.

Many mourners united in prayer and song. From New York, Washington, Miami to Port-au-Prince, Haitians set Jan. 12 aside to grieve and celebrate life.

A year ago Wednesday, a 7.0 earthquake killed a city’s worth of people — the government estimates as many as 300,000. Their names have not been logged, and some of the dead are still under rubble. The quake took United Nations peacekeepers, American college students and hotel guests. It took Haitian adults and children, too many to count.

About 810,000 people they left behind still are homeless from that day’s devastation. But on Wednesday, Haiti’s 10 million survivors declared a national holiday to take the time to remember, to say goodbye to the ones they lost and give thanks for the lives they still have. They grieved as they lamented the stalled progress that keeps so many people homeless and schools in their piles of rubble.

“Everything can stand strong again,” said Alceu Petit, 69, who lost three children, a cousin and uncle to the quake. We recognize this day so that we can remember … Everybody here is persevering.”

Hundreds of white-clad mourners — many weeping, some shrieking with grief — gathered for a special Mass on Wednesday morning at the base of the battered Notre Dame Cathedral. On the Champs de Mars public plaza where thousands of families now reside, masses of Protestants gathered as pastor after pastor told the crowd to celebrate life.

“God saved my life and that of most of my family,” said Bernard Valcin, 40, who dropped by the Champs de Mars before heading home to the tent he lives in with his wife and three children. “I want to thank him for what he’s done for me.”

On the day the ground shook a year ago, Valcin said he was walking his children home from school. Under a red light, he dropped to the ground and covered them with his belly. When he arrived home, his wife was covered in rubble. Only her face was visible. Three months ago, Valcin got a job driving a Ministry of Health ambulance picking up cholera patients at night. But even with his monthly $375 salary, it’s still not enough for the $104 it takes to rent a one-room shack.

“You hear about all of these millions of dollars that have been unblocked for Haiti, and you don’t see it,” he said.

Across town, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who along with Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, co-chairs the reconstruction commission, said Haitians would soon see the fruits of the aid pledged by international donors. Nine projects have been approved to create housing and at least 350,000 Haitians found work, the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission he chairs said. The group acknowledges that about $1 billion will have to be shifted toward short-term goals and that the funds are not tackling the most urgent needs.

Clinton and Bellerive said while both are frustrated with the pace of recovery, progress has been made in Haiti through the work of commission.

Clinton said it’s “easy to see what hasn’t been done … families still living in camps, the debris that has not been removed, the homes still collapsed.” But he added that progress can be seen with a good-faith effort.

Progress includes 50,000 families who now have access to potable water, 3 million cubic meters of debris has been removed and children have returned to school.

“We still have a lot to do,” he conceded. “We want to concentrate on building a new Haiti, not just what existed before.”

Still, with a looming political crisis, and few seeing a way out, Haiti’s reconstruction effort is in trouble of being derailed.

Not far from where Clinton was finishing up a visit at the General Hospital, a small group of anti-Preval protesters traveled through the streets waving cardboard signs saying “Justice for the victims of Jan. 12.”

A few miles up the road on Avenue John Brown, a group burned tires. About 100 student demonstrators threw rocks and lit tires in downtown Port-au-Prince to protest that donations have yet to benefit them.

They condemned the current administration and blamed United Nations peacekeepers for a cholera epidemic sweeping the countryside.

“There are so many aid groups here,” said 28-year-old student Pierre-Rochard Francisque, “and yet we’re expected to live in these camps.”

In Washington, D.C., the Haitian-American community, the Haitian Embassy and the U.S. government employees marked the anniversary with a Mass and a moment of silence while the church bells tolled 35 times to commemorate the duration of the quake: 35 seconds.

Present were Vice President Joe Biden’s wife Jill, U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Rajiv Shah and Thomas Adams, the U.S. State Department’s special coordinator for Haiti.

A number of U.S.-based Haitian celebrities returned “home” to commemorate the day. They included award-winning author Edwidge Danticat, actor Jimmy Jean-Louis, hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean and Michaelle Jean, former governor general of Canada and now UNESCO representative.

“We’ve got the energy and we’ve got to carry on,” Jean told The Miami Herald, attending a ceremony at private Quisqueya University where students told their stories of that day and famed Haitian artists Frank Etienne read poetry.

At 4:53 p.m., the nation observed 35 seconds of silence. Church bells rang as white balloons were released.